The following is a contribution to the JREFís ongoing blog series on skepticism and education. If you are an educator and would like to contribute to this series, please contact Bob Blaskiewicz.

The British poet Christian Ward became a controversial figure recently when his poem "The Deer at Exmoor," which won the Exmoor Society's Hope Bourne poetry prize, was revealed by the Western Morning News to have been plagiarized from Helen Mort's "Deer," which had itself won the Cafe Writers Open Poetry Competition in 2009.

"The most meticulous regulation of nonsense must still result in nonsense.

– Edzard Ernst, M.D., PhD.  

In the US the practice of health care is regulated by the states. Each state board of health issues professional licenses, manages complaints and compliance, and essentially regulates the standard of care. This means that the state legislatures pass the laws that establish which professions will be licensed and under what rules.  

In other words - in the US alone there are at least 50 legal fronts along which we need to defend the scientific legitimacy of health care.  

Recently, Dr. Mehmet Oz, the cardiologist who accepts “reiki” and “evening-out the human body’s energy aura,” announced his acceptance of homeopathy, possibly the most thoroughly tested quack medicine claim, ever; it has failed every double-blind, legitimate, scientific set of tests to which it has been subjected. In November 2002, I offered the JREF million-dollar prize to the UK homeopaths if their claims could pass an extensive test based upon the protocol designed by Dr. Jacques Benveniste [1935-2004] -- a major supporter of homeopathy -- supervised by the Royal Society, the Royal London Hospital, University College, London, and Guy's Hospital, and witnessed by the homeopaths themselves. The results were quite negative, but Dr. Oz has chosen to accept this weird idea, and endorsed it on his site. Comments immediately poured in on his website for his “Homeopathic Starter Kit”…