A leading pharmacologist has criticised degrees in complementary medicine for claiming to offer scientific teaching.
David Colquhoun, a pharmacologist at University College London, said many complementary medicines were not based on scientific evidence and should not be studied as part of a BSc degree.
In a report in the journal Nature, he said: "Most complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) is not science because the vast majority of it is not based on empirical evidence."
He said acupuncture used words "borrowed" from science but they were used in a way that had "no discernible scientific meaning whatsoever".
Mr Colquhoun added: "Yet this sort of gobbledegook is being taught in some UK universities as though it were science."
His report said that in December, the UK Universities and Colleges Admissions Service advertised 61 courses for complementary medicine, of which 45 are BSc honours degrees from 16 universities.
He said - of aromatherapy, acupuncture, traditional Chinese medicine, reflexology, osteopathy, therapeutic bodywork, naturopathy, Ayurveda, shiatsu and qigong - that: "None of these is, by any stretch of the imagination, science, yet they form part of BSc degrees."
He has called on regulators like the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education, and university vice-chancellors, to prevent BSc degrees in what he dubbed "anti-science".
Brian Isbell, head of the University of Westminster's department of complementary therapies defended the BSc description.
He said at the university, which offers 14 BSc CAM courses, students have to study disease, carry out research and produce critiques of literature.
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