Dr. Wallace Sampson speaking about acupuncture in a television interview. Watch video below.
I’m sad to note the recent passing of a longtime leading critic of alternative medicine, Dr. Wallace Ira Sampson (March 29, 1930–May 25, 2015). Our colleagues at the Skeptical Inquirer reported the news on their Facebook Page on Wednesday, saying, “We were deeply saddened to learn of the death of our friend and CSI Fellow, Wallace (Wally) Sampson, earlier this week.” An obituary has since been published by the San Jose Mercury News. It reports that Dr. Sampson “passed away peacefully on May 25, 2015 at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center”—the very hospital at which he served as Director of Oncology from 1991 to 1997.
Dr. Sampson was a key player in the anti-quackery activist movement which predated, grew up alongside, and (beginning in the mid-1970s) combined to a significant extent with the movement for organized scientific skepticism. (For some details of the California Council Against Health Fraud and other early quack-busting groups, see this short history.) He was the founding Editor of the peer-reviewed journal Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine, a Founding Fellow and board member (emeritus) of Institute for Science in Medicine, a blogger and editor emeritus at Science-Based Medicine, and a founding member of the Bay Area Skeptics. Many of his articles and interviews are available here in a collection of links compiled by the Institute for Science in Medicine.
It’s sometimes supposed that skepticism’s interest in medical misinformation and misguided treatments is a recent innovation. The truth is that questionable and fraudulent health claims have been central preoccupations for generations of skeptical activists. Scrutiny of claims of alternative medicine is a critical tradition that reaches back through Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. and beyond. Quackery has always been a public health issue; quack-busting, a vital public service. Four decades ago, Wallace Sampson and his colleagues made sure that the evaluation of alternative health claims would remain a central concern for modern organized skepticism. It falls to us to continue that work, now and for generations to come. It’s certain that work will be needed.
I understand that a tribute to Sampson will appear later this week at Science-Based Medicine. I will add links to this and to any additional tributes as they appear.
In the meantime, I share this video, below. In this television segment hosted by Michael Shermer, Dr. Sampson speaks out about the practice of acupuncture and the metaphysics of Traditional Chinese Medicine: