If I were to say that my passing reference to homeopathy in last week’s review was a result of my psychic powers and I really had no knowledge that Richard Dawkins was going to spend much of tonight’s programme debunking this particular flavour of alternative medicine, you probably wouldn’t believe me. So I won’t (even though the latter half is, at least, true). Perhaps that’s just the kind of coincidence Dawkins is so disenchanted with, along with modern man’s propensity to take such coincidences and build them into a world view totally at odds with what he might call “scientific reality.”

In this second and final instalment of Enemies of Reason, subtitled the Irrational Health Service (full marks for a punny title), Dawkins turns his spotlight on not only homeopathy but every other branch of alternative medicine he can lay his hands on. His premise, you won’t be surprised to learn, is that none of them are worth the candle (or the crystal, etc) when compared to modern medicine.

Science-based medicine, says Dawkins, has increased life expectancy dramatically to the point where we can allow ourselves the luxury of faddish medicine as an alternative.

He bemoans the media for whipping up hysteria about such “unscientific” scares as the purported connection between the MMR vaccine and autism first reported in 1998, but he does at least recognise the reluctance of parents to subject their children to the potential risk of vaccination, which is a positive act, rather than leave them at increased risk of infection from being unvaccinated, which he refers to as a “sin of omission.”

It is well documented that modern society is increasingly unable to weigh risk factors and make a balanced judgement about relative risks. This is exacerbated by media frenzies talking about the risk of some side effect of treatment “doubling” or “trebling” (which therefore appears to be a massive increase) when in fact this may translate only in the risk increasing from 1 in 10,000 to 2 or 3 in 10,000.

But as in last week’s programme, Dawkins sticks slavishly to his principle that science and scientific principle is everything, while failing to recognise that science is only as good as the scientists who practice it. The possible connection between MMR and autism appears after further research to be much less likely than was first suggested, but many people still harbour a suspicion that it is more than coincidence that previously healthy children developed autism after taking the vaccination. We have been told so many times before by scientists and doctors that something is “impossible.” It was claimed to be “impossible” that stomach ulcers could be caused by bacteria. What bacteria could possibly live in the acidic conditions of the stomach, scoffed the majority of scientists? Anyone who believed this “fairy story” was branded a fool, a charlatan, or worse.

Thankfully not all scientists were brow-beaten by this approach and eventually Helicobacter pylori was found to live in the stomach and be the cause of stomach ulcers.

And only last week, as I reported in the comments on my previous review, scientists managed to transmit a signal at 2x, 4x and 10x the speed of light; something that all of Einsteinian physics decrees impossible.

Since the story of science is unfolding in this way every day, is it any wonder the majority of the public are sceptical when they’re told something is “impossible.” Their experience is that it’s only impossible until scientists discover why and how it is actually possible, and then their story changes.

Dawkins’ reaction to the discussion of homeopathy falls precisely into this realm. After hearing an experienced homeopath’s explanation of how it works, Dawkins expostulates incredulously: “that suggests we’re dealing with an entirely new force unknown to physics.”

Really? His tone of voice suggests that this is totally preposterous, but nothing in the history of science suggests that we have at this point in time discovered the totality of forces in the universe. Why then is this suggestion so incredible? We are only now beginning to have equipment sensitive enough to detect gravity waves. It seems quite likely there are other forces that we are as yet completely unable to detect or even perhaps conceive.

Later Dawkins enlists the aid of “evolutionary psychologists” who, apparently, believe that humans have evolved very sophisticated self-healing mechanisms that may be behind the successes of alternative therapies. So as long as we replace the therapists “mumbo-jumbo” (as Dawkins calls it) with his own preferred version of mumbo-jumbo, he’s happy to accept that as an explanation. The therapies work, but not because of any intrinsic worth. Only because we “would have got better anyway.”

“I accept,” said Dawkins revealingly, “that alternative medicine is peculiarly well positioned to deliver placebos.”

What he meant was that most alternative practitioners prefer to spend much longer with their patients than the average 8 minutes it takes an NHS GP to listen to your symptoms and scratch out a presciption for a bottle of pills. And because this slower, more compassionate and humane approach to medicine is preferred by most people, they imagine themselves better as a result.

To which I would say: the end justifies the means. If people are getting better it doesn’t matter how you explain it away, and it has to be cheaper than the billions of pounds a year we spend on prescription drugs, many of which are flushed down the toilet.