So-called alternative medicine (SCAM) is popular and therefore important, whether we love or loathe it. Consequently, an impressive number of books about SCAM are already available. Most of them, however, are woefully uncritical, overtly promotional and dangerously misleading. Not so this one. Edzard’s book was written by someone who received SCAM as a patient, practised SCAM as a doctor, and researched SCAM as a scientist. It provides an insider’s perspective by covering aspects of SCAM that most books avoid, and by questioning the many tacitly accepted assumptions and wild extrapolations that underpin SCAM. The text is factual, occasionally dosed with a touch of humour or satire. The aim is not only to inform but also to entertain – as he does in his other books Trick or Treatment, More Harm Than Good and A Scientist in Wonderland.