Returning medicine to its human dimension to fight pseudoscience

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When we ask ourselves why so many people rely on unfounded or dangerous beliefs about health, to the point of dying or causing the death of their children, the answer cannot be limited to either a lack of information or a generic rejection of rationality. The root of this inclination must be sought in the absolute centrality that, for each of us, the personal perception of being better or worse assumes. Health is a dimension in which the individual, in front of his own body, cannot and does not want to give up the right to feel - and judge - firsthand what is happening. When one experiences a sensation of improvement, this imposes itself with such force that it makes any rational, statistical or external argument irrelevant. The experience of pain and healing is inseparable from identity itself, and any knowledge that claims to correct or relativize it is experienced as a threat or a dispossession.

The promise of pseudo-medicine is grafted onto this perceptual structure: if you feel better, it means that the treatment is working. “Alternative” medicine builds all its success on a return of sovereignty to the patient, who is legitimized in his direct experience, without any mediation . This apparently harmless strategy is actually very powerful: because it asks the individual only for what he is already willing to grant – trust in his own feelings – and not the sacrifice of his own centrality in favor of a collective, impersonal truth, established by abstract methods such as clinical trials or statistics. In this sense, the distance between scientific method and personal perception is not only a question of communication, but a structural knot, difficult to heal : science was born precisely to neutralize the biases of subjectivity, pseudoscience wins precisely because it embraces them without reservations . Not only that: this strengthening and defense of individual perception by proponents of anti-scientific therapies also ends up taking on a strong identity value. We notice this, for example, when measures such as mandatory vaccination are imposed, when public debate ends up taking on a paradoxical and almost inverted nature: those who rely on their own sensations or alternative narratives proclaim themselves “free thinkers”, capable of escaping conformism and “seeing” where others would be blind; those who instead accept the discipline of the scientific method, the need for shared data and the systematic criticism of their own beliefs are derided as followers, “sheep” incapable of autonomy.

The invocation of personal freedom, in this context, often turns into an instinctive defense of that perception, erected as the ultimate and indisputable criterion : "it works for me / it doesn't help me". In this logic, any invitation to submit one's beliefs to collective control, to a comparison with data, with statistics, with knowledge patiently built up over time, is experienced as an authoritarian claim, a violence against one's autonomy, a request to "think like the herd". Thus, the discipline of the scientific method, which was born precisely to emancipate knowledge from the arbitrariness and error of the individual, is charged with an opposite meaning: it becomes, in the eyes of those who reject it, an instrument of arrogance, oppression and conformism.

This paradox fuels the radicalization of public debate: the freedom claimed is not the freedom to know, to question, to change one's mind in the face of facts, but the freedom to never be contradicted by reality, to keep one's narrative intact even against all evidence. Scientific medicine or science itself are reduced to the role of a "church" that demands obedience, while the claim of individual experience is elevated to a banner of emancipation.

The issue becomes even more insidious when considering the course of even very serious diseases that in the initial stages do not give significant or immediately perceptible symptoms, as happens with many tumors in the early stages, or with some chronic diseases. In these cases, relying on homeopathy or pseudoscientific remedies can reinforce the illusion of effectiveness: the patient feels better, not because the remedy has cured something, but because the disease progresses silently and asymptomatic, or because the natural progression of the symptoms includes periods of spontaneous improvement . Thus, in the absence of alarming signals, the belief that the right cure has been found can be reinforced, just as the real pathology develops without any opposition, perhaps in the face of a treatment indicated by doctors that would cause discomfort and possible side effects. This self-deception is one of the greatest risks of unfounded practices, because it combines the false security of the absence of visible damage with the renunciation of therapies that could really change the patient's clinical history.

Faced with this situation, for decades there has been a call for a return to a “person-centered” medicine, to relationships, listening and dialogue: the remedy, in fact, to the solipsistic belief anchored in the self-induced perception of “feeling better” can be effectively found in conversation and in the care of words, before people. Yet, this awareness, which now belongs to the official rhetoric of every congress, has almost always remained a dead letter. The real issue, in fact, has never been the lack of empathy in individual professionals, nor their inability to listen or explain: healthcare personnel, in most cases , are well aware of the need to build a relationship of trust, to welcome the patient's suffering in its entirety. The problem, however, is that the system itself has made this relationship practically impossible, transforming care into an industrial process, marked by unreasonable timeframes, overloaded with bureaucracy, impoverished of resources and real tools.

Today, a doctor is asked to see dozens of patients in a very short time, to fill out a mountain of paperwork, to respond to increasingly pressing administrative tasks, often without any psychological support, with worn-out structures and staff reduced to the bare minimum. In these conditions, the much-evoked “care relationship” risks being reduced to an empty formula: those who work in the ward or in the clinic do not physically have the space to listen, explain, reassure, build therapeutic alliances. And, above all, they find themselves unable to integrate that component of personal attention that represents, for patients, concrete proof of being “at the center.” Thus, medicine, despite all the declarations of principle, ends up appearing adversarial and guided by interests alien to the individual, while pseudoscience – free from real constraints and responsibilities – can afford to exclusively occupy the terrain of listening, individual narration, personalization.

The consequence is that any appeal to the "doctor-patient relationship" remains ineffective if the issue of the material conditions in which that relationship should take place is not decisively addressed . What is needed are not good intentions to be declaimed, but organization of work, investments, structures, specific training and a redefinition of the priorities of the health system. The example of oncology departments that permanently integrate psychologists into the patient's path - with widely documented results in terms of perceived quality, adherence to treatment and even clinical outcomes - shows that an alternative model is possible, but only when it is supported with resources, time, dedicated professionalism and the political will to put personal care, not just as a statement, but as a fact.

Ultimately, the battle against pseudoscience is played out right here: in the ability to restore to official medicine its human dimension not as rhetoric or an accessory gesture, but as a basic condition, built and guaranteed by collective choices and organizational structures . Only if doctors truly have the time, the tools and the support to accompany the patient also in his experience - without having to choose every day whether to be technicians or people - pseudoscience will be dispossessed of its most powerful weapon, and medicine will be able to return to being, at the same time, science and relationship, method and listening, test and attention.

Let's give back to doctors and health workers all the resources, time and human dimension: this is the first, most important of the reforms, if we intend to recover the trust of patients.

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