My Contribution to the Dundee Comedy Festival
NHS Scotland are advertising a job for a ‘specialty doctor in homeopathy’, which pays up to £68,638. They are also letting go of hundreds of other staff who have actual jobs. Obviously this is fucking stupid, and so several bloggers have applied for it already, and obviously so have I. You can read their supporting statements at the following URLs, and you can read mine below those links.
- http://xtaldave.wordpress.com/2010/08/14/in-which-i-apply-for-a-job-as-a-homeopath/
- http://sciencedigestive.blogspot.com/2010/08/my-application-for-job-as-homeopath.html
- http://www.dcscience.net/?p=3339
- http://www.realityismyreligion.com/alternative-medicine/i-applied-to-be-a-homeopath
Update: there’s no point us both maintaining a list, so here’s Zeno’s.
Statement in Support of Application – please tell us your personal qualities, skills and attributes, experience and any major achievements and show how they match those needed for this job.
While I have had no formal training in homeopathy, I have a very good understanding of the theory and practice of, and the evidence base for, the discipline. While I understand you may be reluctant to hire a specialty doctor with no formal training in the field, I should point out that my outside viewpoint grants a certain clarity, and I am therefore unencumbered by various misconceptions which are common within the industry – such as the idea that homeopathy has any power to heal illnesses or injuries. My research background will be useful in keeping up to date with the latest research in case anybody ever proves that it does – as will my Master’s degree in physics, which allows me to see through the misguided and fraudulent appeals to quantum strangeness which riddle much of the published literature on homeopathy.
My second degree allows me to call myself ‘doctor’, however I am not a medical doctor. In fact I have a PhD from Manchester University’s award winning School of Dentistry. I believe this non-medical doctorate would be very useful to this role, categorised under “medical and dental”, because homeopathy cannot be considered ‘medicine’.
I would be a valuable supervisor to the Tayside Postgraduate Homeopathy Group as I am passionate about raising awareness of homeopathy. Indeed, I have already participated in a large-scale campaign to this end, known as “ten twenty-three”, in which healthy volunteers (including myself) deliberately swallowed massive overdoses of homeopathic arsenic. This has been reported as an ‘anti-homeopathy’ demonstration, but in fact the result was quite balanced: the volunteers suffered no ill effects, and indeed no effects at all, thereby demonstrating both the safety and inefficacy of homeopathic preparations.
I understand you may also be reluctant to appoint a specialty doctor in homeopathy who does not believe that homeopathy can be used medicinally, however the guidance handed to the NHS from Parliament suggests that homeopathic preparations may be offered not for their efficacy but to provide patients with a greater range of choice. I would be the ideal candidate for this role because I offer a yet greater choice than more mainstream homeopaths, since I will ensure that patients’ choices are informed by all the relevant facts, including the fact that homeopathic preparations are pharmacologically inert.
I appreciate that this is an unorthodox application, however I hope you will consider it given the unorthodox nature of the position being advertised–that of a doctor of non-medicine. This happy alignment of post and applicant seems apt given the first law of homeopathy, and I am keen to apply the second law to my work as soon as I start.
Obviously I’ve got this post pretty well sewn up, but in case I am unavailable you might want to apply here.