Petr Skrabanek: a contrarian ahead of his time

A doctor whose criticisms of medicine would resonate with the modern era.

For my December post I wanted to dive into the idea of the Bellman’s Fallacy; essentially the fallacy that repetition of an idea lends truthfulness to said idea even if it lacks proper evidence.

The Bellman’s Fallacy isn’t a widely used term, as a phrase such as “evidence through consensus” or something along those lines may be used.

However, I came across the Bellman’s fallacy via an article in the BMJ, which made reference to the possible originator: a European, heavy-smoking epidemiologist named Petr Skrabanek.

Skrabanek became popular (relatively speaking) not just for his studies, but for his critiques and skepticisms of how medicine began to operate.

This included such aspects as preventive medicine, the hubris of the medical establishment, the politicization of medicine, and the widespread idea of “healthism” that began taking over both medicine and the public’s idea of medicine.

Take this quote, supposedly from his book The Death of Humane Medicine: