Scientific evaluation of complementary and alternative medicines that contribute to integrative health: What science are we talking about?

We begin by noting the primary focus of the healthcare system on the technical and scientific aspects of care, with considerable effectiveness, but at the cost of a scientific approach dominated by positivism, sometimes to the detriment of its human dimension. We question the need to open up evaluation methods when integrating complementary and alternative medicines (CAMs). These methodological approaches, rooted in a framework other than positivism, would give greater scientific legitimacy to knowledge derived from lived experience, rigorously collected from both patients and CAM practitioners. First, we question the theoretical frameworks on which medical practices and CAMs are based. We will illustrate this epistemological reflection with the example of subcutaneous resonance (RESC), a healthcare practice inspired by Chinese medicine. We present RESC and the history of its development, through training reserved to certified health professionals, and focus on the obstacles and facilitators that RESC has encountered since its conception. This analysis allows us to highlight the societal issues that explain the difficult integration of CAMs in France in general.

With a view to the second article in this series, we outline a framework for the scientific evaluation of RESC, applicable to CAMs in general, by placing this evaluation within the context of integrative health development. This evaluation will necessarily begin with an effort to clarify the paradigm within which a research question is to be framed, in order to broaden the choice, or even to bring different paradigms together, accepting their constraints, in order to ultimately exploit all their possibilities.