Abstract
In this chapter I will tell the fictitious story of ‘Professor Humbug’. He is an invention of mine that serves to exemplify key features of quackery in alternative medicine. On the basis of certain characteristics of Prof Humbug, I develop my ‘Humbug score’. The score is an attempt to quantify the degree to which the individuals discussed in the following section of the book might be called charlatans. It will be employed for that purpose throughout this section.
Though the doctors treated him, let his blood, and gave him medications to drink, he nevertheless recovered. Leo Tolstoy
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Ernst, E. (2024). The Humbug Score. In: Bizarre Medical Ideas. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-55102-4_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-55102-4_5
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