[droopyEyelids]

>For example, many of us here on HN, possess the critical reasoning skills to determine snake oil from a credible research lab. Given that there are almost no practicing oncologists present, we'd all likely qualify as "lay people".

The fact that you think critical reasoning can help discriminate between a quack and someone selling real medicine indicates you don't have the ability to make that distinction.

The truth is, no one does. It takes a process with many checks, and even then snake oil makes it through.

Hell, the same people who make real medicine can have a lapse of judgment and make phony medicine. No one could tell, even their peers, without verifying the experiments performed.

It's not a far-fetched scenario. Prominent researchers fall from grace several times a year. Multinational drug companies sell medicines that perform worse than placebos.

[wamatt]

"no one has the ability to make the distinction between a quack and real medicine" (paraphrasing OP)

What utter nonsense. If someone presented you with a homeopathic dropper [1] saying it would cure cancer vs a new gold nanoparticle experimental therapy [2], "no one" would be able to tell the difference?

While the new treatment may turn out to have issues (no one was suggesting experiments were risk free), to imply it's indistinguishable from quackery, is false.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathy

[2] http://bjr.birjournals.org/content/85/1010/101.full.pdf