Incommensurable Worldviews? Is Public Use of Complementary and Alternative Medicines Incompatible with Support for Science and Conventional Medicine? Paul Stoneman 1 *, Patrick Sturgis 2 , Nick Allum 3 , Elissa Sibley 3 1 Department of Sociology, University of Surrey, Guildford, Surrey, United Kingdom, 2 National Centre for Research Methods, University of Southampton, Southampton, United Kingdom, 3 Department of Sociology, University of Essex, Colchester, United Kingdom Abstract Proponents of controversial Complementary and Alternative Medicines, such as homeopathy, argue that these treatments can be used with great effect in addition to, and sometimes instead of, ‘conventional’ medicine. In doing so, they accept the idea that the scientific approach to the evaluation of treatment does not undermine use of and support for some of the more controversial CAM treatments. For those adhering to the scientific canon, however, such efficacy claims lack the requisite evidential basis from randomised controlled trials. It is not clear, however, whether such opposition characterises the views of the general public. In this paper we use data from the 2009 Wellcome Monitor survey to investigate public use of and beliefs about the efficacy of a prominent and controversial CAM within the United Kingdom, homeopathy. We proceed by using Latent Class Analysis to assess whether it is possible to identify a sub-group of the population who are at ease in combining support for science and conventional medicine with use of CAM treatments, and belief in the efficacy of homeopathy. Our results suggest that over 40% of the British public maintain positive evaluations of both homeopathy and conventional medicine simultaneously. Explanatory analyses reveal that simultaneous support for a controversial CAM treatment and conventional medicine is, in part, explained by a lack of scientific knowledge as well as concerns about the regulation of medical research. Citation: Stoneman P, Sturgis P, Allum N, Sibley E (2013) Incommensurable Worldviews? Is Public Use of Complementary and Alternative Medicines Incompatible with Support for Science and Conventional Medicine? PLoS ONE 8(1): e53174. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0053174 Editor: Margaret Sampson, Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario, Canada Received April 23, 2012; Accepted November 27, 2012; Published January 30, 2013 Copyright: ß 2013 Stoneman et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Funding: This research was funded by the Wellcome Trust, as part of the ‘Developing a novel segmentation of adults and young people in relation to biomedical science’ project, grant reference number: EDU/28/4/20/SotonUni/DO18-1299. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. * E-mail: p.stoneman@surrey.ac.uk Introduction For some, Complementary and Alternative Medicines (CAM), such as reiki, acupuncture, herbal medicines, homeopathy, and healing crystals offer a ‘natural’ and effective alternative to conventional medicine, which is overly-dependent on the synthetic remedies of multinational ‘big pharma’. Proponents of CAM argue that the treatments they espouse can be used with great effect alongside, and even instead of, conventional medicine [1] and that those who oppose complementary approaches are wedded to a narrow and restrictive view of both medical practice and treatment evaluation [2–5]. CAM treatments, moreover, cannot easily be consigned by their critics to the realm of snake-oil and quackery. For, despite often being questioned on the grounds of lacking robust evidence of clinical efficacy, they are nonetheless routinely prescribed in modern healthcare systems around the world, including those that are publically funded, such as the National Health Service in the United Kingdom [6]. Furthermore, some therapies commonly categorised as CAMs, such as massage, osteopathy and chiropractic care, have been evaluated with the rigorous methods of randomised controlled trials (RCTs) and have been shown to be safe and efficacious [7–9]. There are other forms of CAM, however, that have been the subject of intense scrutiny and critique from sections of the scientific community [10–11]. Perhaps because of the seemingly widespread acceptance of the merits of CAM within the general public and amongst many medical practitioners, these more controversial treatments have faced sustained opposition from those who advocate an evidence-based approach. Homeopathy, in particular, has been the source of sustained criticism from scientists on both evidential [12–16] and plausibility grounds [6,17–19]. Such concerns relate not only to the quality and robustness of the underlying science but also to the conse- quences of patients relying on demonstrably inefficacious treatments when conventional medicines have, or should have been prescribed, with potentially fatal consequences [20]. This and other critical evidence led a recent UK Parliamentary Select Committee to recommend that homeopathy should not be funded through the National Health Service and that all regulatory licenses allowing homeopathic products to be sold as medicines should be withdrawn [6]. From the (what we shall call) ‘strong scientific’ perspective, then, there is little or no evidence to support the contention that homeopathy can be a useful and safe complement, let alone alternative to, conventional treatment [21]. For those adhering to this strong scientific position, support for the principles, processes and structures of conventional medicine must be considered fundamentally incompatible with a belief in the validity of PLOS ONE | www.plosone.org 1 January 2013 | Volume 8 | Issue 1 | e53174