How Science is Funded

Is mindfulness meditation science? I saw this asked and answered definitively here. I examined this site and discovered an organisation (Society for Science-Based Medicine) who were funded as a campaign group to denounce everything that is not BigPharma. Steven Novella is a denier, and he belongs to a club of deniers the society for science-based medicine. A climate denier is someone paid to debunk the legitimate science of climate change, this guy is paid to deny anything that is not BigPharma science. Why? Profits. In the West therapies are eating into the profits of Big Pharma, people are choosing to go to practitioners who do not use BigPharma's drugs; this campaign group are trying to mess with the law to make it harder for practitioners who do not use BigPharma drugs.

I have a yardstick - acupuncture. These deniers describe acupuncture as randomly-placed needles so whether you agree with acupuncture as medicine no researcher could legitimately describe it as that. I then discovered this Guardian article about acupuncture sceptics in which Steve Novella was quoted and BigPharma bells rang. The article only discusses acupuncture in terms of the UK rather than considering it as part of TCM which has been practised for 3000 years; only the West matters!! One of the hidden axioms of science is that it is funding-driven, this appears to be that type of dubious "climate-denial" science.

Further investigation of the source of this mindfulness link led me to the Society for Science-Based Medicine website, it is a campaigning group against all treatments that do not use BigPharma's drugs. Here is a course given by Harriet Hall, she probably believes it.

This is just a list of therapies.

She was sponsored by the James Randi Foundation wiki. The Foundation was originally paranormal so why are therapies being investigated? My conclusion - money. It is a good association for BigPharma to link therapies with the paranormal. In the wiki it has 2 employees with a budget of nearly a million dollars every year. If this is not funded science I don't know what is. 3000 years of acupuncture tradition being investigated by a paranormal organisation!! And they call it science. I went further to National Capital Area Sceptics and gave up. Was I naive enough to think I would find Breitbart or Monsanto?

Do I really need to follow the money when you consider the way the organisation functions?