When Alternative Medicine Researchers Go Wrong
Research ethics scandals aren’t common in alternative medicine, presumably mostly because there’s, well, so little research done. When you start actually verifying whether your treatments work, you can get into new kinds of trouble.
See this item, from China’s Xinhua News Agency:
Fake research papers cast TCM to shame
A Chinese researcher on traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has been caught “plagiarism and fake research” in papers published in international journals, according to newspaper reports.
The four papers, each with the same lead author, He Haibo, associate professor with the Zhejiang University, had been retracted by the international journals, the Guangzhou-based 21st Century Business Herald reported Tuesday.
One of China’s top TCM experts, Li Lianda, a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, was also implicated in the scandal as Li was listed as one of the co-authors of all the four papers.
The nice music shop clerk who recommended “ginger tea with honey” for my cold, this morning, can be forgiven for having no clue about the clinical efficacy of her prescription. People who call themselves health professionals can’t.
FYI, here’s Wikipedia’s entry on Traditional Chinese medicine.
Research Ethics Blog 
That’s a very terrible one. Whether it is alternative medicine or modern medicine, they can go wrong, but in modern medicine, doctors can do something about it though. We’re not sure of alternative medicine.