Roberto Abbas is the author of, and co-editor of, two books. She lives in South Florida.

[The following is excerpted from an article published by The Conversation on November 22, 2016. The full article can be found here.]

Skeptics of alternative medicine may find it easy to take for granted that all the scientific data supporting a particular cure or treatment is sound, but even the most basic pieces of these studies can be found in the public domain. While much effort is placed on producing scientific “evidence,” there are countless real-world examples of flawed clinical trials and flawed evidence that do not make their way into scientific journals or published reports. If skepticism is to occur effectively, people will need to make the effort to discover these flaws, and the results of these errors can be important and useful.

Unfortunately, the scientific world lacks a way to verify the accuracy of the scientific literature. Many of us — including myself on this article — have taken in, adapted, and refined the process of scientific literature reviews as our bread and butter. To some extent, we’ve been doing our job. However, there has been a marked and disturbing lack of progress as to what a person with an academic background needs to do to actually obtain useful research data.

I propose to remedy that problem by proposing the establishment of an independent scientific body to ensure that researchers are providing data that is both accurate and available to the public. It is my hope that this body will be organized to be autonomous from the larger scientific community and to have the support of the general scientific community. The proposed entity would be the Institute for Evidence-based Medicine.

I know there are skeptics out there and I know skeptics that believe in alternative medicine. I have often expressed that I believe there is no scientific proof that a cure exists for any disease, and I do not understand why alternative medicine is so popular. I have expressed frustration at the amount of misinformation about alternative medicine that pervades the media.

I have never felt a certain level of skepticism towards science. However, I have also learned a lot about medicine through all sorts of clinical studies, and the studies I have done have left a big impact on me and my work. I have also learned a great deal from my involvement in the creation of some of the largest research findings on the effects of marijuana on cancer and HIV for AIDS patient care. Finally, I have learned, from a number of experience with a variety