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Fifty Nobel prizewinners are lending their prestige to a new journal aimed at critically evaluating the claims of alternative medicine. The Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine, described as “the first peer-reviewed journal dedicated entirely to the scientific, rational evaluations of unconventional health claims”, was launched in Washington DC last week. The Nobel laureates, including Baruj Benacerraf, Francis Crick, Arthur Kornberg, Leon Lederman and Glenn T. Seaborg, calling themselves the Council for Scientific Medicine, say that “the need for objective, scientific critiques of the claims of ‘alternative’ medicine has never been greater”.

The biannual journal is published by Paul Kurtz, founder of Prometheus Books. Kurtz, formerly a professor of philosophy at the State University of New York at Buffalo, also publishes Skeptical Inquirer, the journal of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, based in Amherst, New York. The first issue of the new journal deals with practices such as chelation therapy (“ineffective”), therapeutic touch (“pseudomedical”), and homeopathy (“by every objective, rational, and medical standard, homeopathy has failed to establish its scientific credibility”).