Karen Lawson

Karen Lawson is a pseudoscientist and Program Director for the Health Coaching track, Center for Spirituality & Healing, University of Minnesota. She is the faculty advisor for the IHEAL at the University of Minnesota. She is also "board-certified in family medicine and holistic medicine." Lawson teaches shamanism and has published articles relating to integrative medicine and holistic medicine.

Pharyngula email
PZ Myers on his blog Pharyngula posted an exchange one of his colleagues had with Lawson about a workshop offered at the University of Minnesota, Homeopathy Acute Care Workshop.

Homeopathy is a completely bogus therapy. I am astounded that you are presenting this misinformation here at the university. This is a disgrace, and an insult to the real work being done at the U of M.

Dear Michael, I have taken a few days to sit with your hostile and critical email, as I wanted to give it a fair evaluation time. I was quite stunned by the vehemence of your note, and must question exactly how much you know about Homeopathy, and where you learned that.

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Many physicians and scientists reject Homeopathy without any knowledge, because they say there is no plausible mechanism that can explain HOW it works, regardless of experiences and studies that have shown its impacts. Remember that we don't know how the majority of biomedical interventions, including drugs, work. Additionally, at one time we didn't know about germs and didn't believe that hand-washing had a mechanism of action that could explain how it impacted stopping the spread of disease&mdash;so it was fought against for decades. True, science has not yet created the technology to explore homeopathy in a way that can be understood. That doesn't mean we stop asking the questions.