The Commission for Scientific Medicine and Mental Health (CSMMH) was founded on November 13, 2003, by the nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization Center for Inquiry. The commission is commonly referenced for their critical studies of popular, but unproven, alternative medicine and mental health practices. This organisation is not an official body as one might think from its title Commission, but rather a collection of people interested in "the scientific examination of unproven alternative medicine and mental health therapies”.

According to their website, the commission derives its purpose from the statement that "Aberrant remedies are often offered uncritically as alternative or complementary to mainstream medicine. They include everything from untested herbal medicines, homeopathy, and aromatherapy to the use of acupuncture, therapeutic touch, prayer at a distance, faith healing, chelation therapy, and purportedly miraculous cancer cures. Similarly, a wide variety of untested practices have flourished in popularity in the field of mental health. Still other techniques are widely used even though they are questionable on scientific grounds. Although some of these techniques may ultimately prove to be effective, it is disturbing that their use greatly outstrips the scientific evidence."

In an effort to increase the amount of empirical data available concerning these untested remedies, the commission sponsors two publications: The Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine and The Scientific Review of Mental Health Practice (<i>SRAM</i>). In addition, it sponsors conferences and seminars in scientific medicine and mental health for healthcare providers and for the public.

In 2004, CSMMH joined its sister organization, the Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), in designing and conducting a preliminary examination of the claims of Natasha Demkina, a 17-year-old, alleged medical psychic in Saransk, Russia. Demkina provides diagnostic readings to people based on her claimed ability to see everything inside of a person's body down to the cellular level. The producer-director of the Discovery Channel program, <i>The Girl with X-ray Eyes</i>, invited CSMMH and CSICOP to test the psychic's claims and brought the young woman to New York City to film the test on May 1, 2004. The test, which found no evidence to warrant a further study of Demkina's claims, was designed and conducted by CSMMH's executive director Andrew A. Skolnick and Ray Hyman, Ph.D. and Richard Wiseman, Ph.D., who are psychology professors and CSICOP researchers. The Discovery Channel program has produced a lot of controversy in Europe and the United States, with Natasha Demkina's supporters angrily denouncing the CSMMH-CSICOP researchers. Unfortunately, the program contains numerous factual errors; for example, if fails to mention CSMMH or its roll in designing and conducting the test and then wrongly identifies Skolnick as a "medical doctor." CSMMH's executive director is a medical journalist, not a physician. A number of these errors are now being used by critics to attack the researchers.

However, this research was also heavily criticized because of a number of flaws from the part of the researchers: 1- Contrary to what the researchers had agreed with Natasha in their own “protocols”, there was a rather brute attempt to take her mother out of the test room (both Joe Nickell and Richard Wiseman were involved in this serious attempt of violation of the protocols). 2- Right before the beginning of the test, Natasha complained about two conditions which seemed indeed beyond her previous claims and that were rather beyond the example conditions that were provided in the protocols. 3- Richard Wiseman convinced her to accept these alien conditions using technically flawed and logically incorrect reasoning, which some say was meant to deceive Natasha. 4- One of the subjects seemed to have a leak in his eyes’ mask, which also violated the protocols. 5- There were two subjects with the same clinical condition (removed appendix), again violating the protocols. 6- The subjects never showed any proof of their alleged clinical conditions, also violating the protocols (not even the researchers really know if they indeed had the conditions they claimed to have). 7- The researchers issued statements, even in the documentary, declaring that Natasha was “living an illusion” regarding her powers, and that they had “closed the chapter” on Natasha, and that “a failure is a failure”. Comments like these were prohibited by the protocols presented by the researchers themselves (precisely because, according to the researchers, their test could not yield such terminal conclusions but only preliminary ones), and as a consequence some scientists, like Nobel Laureate Brian Josephson, have heavily criticized it. Some good material criticizing this test is available on the internet in the webpage of professor Brian Josephson and elsewhere, under titles like “CSICOP vs Natasha Demkina” and “embarrassing answers”.

University of California at Irvine Clinical Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology Bruce Flamm, M.D. and other researchers for CSMMH and its journal <i>SRAM</I> were instrumental in exposing the scandal involving the publication of a Columbia University study in the <i>Journal of Reproductive Medicine</i> (Cha, KY et.al. 2001). The now-discredited study claimed to have doubled the conception rate in women treated at an infertility clinic in Korea by having Christians pray for them thousands of miles away. The study first came under suspicion in 2001 when the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services investigated a complaint that patients in the clinical trial had been enrolled without their knowledge or consent. In November 2004, one of the three authors, Daniel Wirth, an attorney and parapsychologist, was sentence to five years in prison for fraud not related to the study. The study's "lead author," Rogerio Lobo, M.D., former head of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons, now claims he was not an author at all and Columbia Univesity has asked the journal to remove Lobo's name as an author. The third author, Kwang Y. Cha, M.D., at the time of the study was clinical director of the Cha-Columbia Infertility Center in New York, yet he had no license to practice medicine in that state. Despite repeated requests by Dr. Flamm and other physicians critical of the study, Lawrence Devoe, M.D., editor-in-chief of the <i>Journal of Reproductive Medicine</i>, continues to stand by the study and refuses to retract it. (Flamm, BL 2004, 2005)

Notable Members

Baruj Benacerraf, M.D., Nobel Laureate

Albert Ellis, Ph.D.

Arthur Kornberg, M.D., Nobel Laureate

Leon Lederman, Ph.D., Nobel Laureate

Elisabeth Loftus, Ph.D.

External links

CSMMH Homepage

The Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine, a CSMMH-sponsored publication

The Scientific Review of Mental Health Practice, a CSMMH-sponsored publication

References

[1489], Cha, KY et. al. Does Prayer Influence the Success of in Vitro Fertilization–Embryo Transfer? <i>J Reprod Med.</i> 2001;46:781–787

[1490], Flamm, BL. Faith Healing Confronts Modern Medicine.<i>SRAM</i>. 2004;8(1):9-14

[1491], Flamm, BL. The Bizarre Columbia University 'Miracle' Saga Continues. <i>Skeptical Inquirer</i>. March/April 2005;29(2):