"The Healthy Skeptic" Gets A Healthy Dose of Skepticism

A couple of weeks ago, I came across this site by a self proclaimed "skeptic" promoting health and nutrition called, 'The Healthy Skeptic'. At first, I was enthralled to find another skeptical podcast that could be a potential source which I could listen to about nutritional information from a scientifically inclined perspective. As I began listening to a podcast episode, it did not take me very long to notice a few instances of my skeptical "spidey sense" going off. Upon closer examination, I saw that the main website had some interesting claims about acupuncture under the special "myth busting" section. Chris Kresser is a licensed acupuncturist who calls himself the "Healthy Skeptic", so I was more than intrigued to learn more about his premise that "everything we’ve been taught about Chinese medicine in the West isn’t accurate and is a functional, flesh and bones medicine based on the same basic physiology as western medicine." (Kresser 2010) Of course I wanted to see the evidence, after all, he does have the word "skeptic" in his title and it was provided for me in a series of six separate sections titled "Chinese Medicine Demystified". The following is a great example of some common logical fallacies, that ANY intelligent person can make, and includes my critique of what I encountered upon reviewing each section.