A Scientist in Wonderland: A Memoir of Searching for Truth and Finding Trouble - Softcover

Ernst, Edzard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1845407776 ISBN 13: 9781845407773

Publisher: Imprint Academic, 2015

Synopsis

This is the story of my life as a doctor and a scientist. Despite a youthful ambition to become a jazz musician, I eventually studied medicine and became a medical research scientist, taking up appointments in Germany, Austria and finally in England. My reverence for the pursuit of truth through the application of scientific methods, coupled with a growing interest in the history of medicine during the Nazi era, did not always endear me to my professional colleagues. At the time I was appointed to the world's first chair in alternative medicine, this was an area of health care that had never been studied systematically, and was almost entirely dominated by outspokenly evangelic promoters and enthusiasts among them, famously, HRH Prince Charles many of whom exhibited an overtly hostile, anti-scientific attitude towards the objective study of their favoured therapies. Clashes were inevitable, but the sheer ferocity with which advocates of alternative medicine would go in order to protect their field from scrutiny came as a profound surprise. This memoir provides a unique insight into the cutthroat politics of academic life and offers a sobering reflection on the damage already done by pseudoscience in the field of medicine.

About this title

Review

[F]or all its trenchant arguments about evidence-based science, the second half of A Scientist in Wonderland remains a very human memoir, and Ernst's account of the increasingly personal nature of the attacks he faced when speaking to CAM practitioners and advocacy groups is disturbing... Ben Goldacre's 2012 book Bad Pharma created a storm via its exposure of the pharmaceutical industry s unhealthy links with mainstream medicine. Ernst s book deserves to do the same for the quackery trading under the name of complementary and alternative medicine --Helen Bynum, Times Higher Education, Jan 29, 2015

If you want a true measure of the man, buy Edzard Ernst's memoir A Scientist in Wonderland, which the Imprint Academic press have just released. It would be worth reading [even] if the professor had never been the victim of a royal vendetta --Nick Cohen, The Spectator, Jan 31, 2015

A Scientist in Wonderland is a rather droll, quick read... [and] it's an effective antidote to New Age nonsense, pseudo-science and old-fashioned quackery. --Robbie Millen, Times, Feb 9, 2015

About the Author

Professor Ernst qualified as a physician in Germany where he also completed his MD and PhD theses. He was Professor in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (PMR) at Hannover Medical School (Germany) and Head of the PMR Department at the University of Vienna (Austria). He came to the University of Exeter in 1993 to establish the first Chair in Complementary Medicine. Since 2012, he is Emeritus Professor.

Edition details

• Publisher: Imprint Academic
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1845407776
• ISBN 13: 9781845407773
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 200