AMA

“The organizational strategy of establishing exclusionary associations represented an effort at boundary work through organizational means, a solution to the epistemological inability to discriminate between competing claims. Legitimate knowledge was to be judged accord to who proclaimed it. . . . The criterion for homeopathic expulsion was not determined by the content or nature of their evidence, but rather by the exclusion from the regular professional community. Membership thus served as a solution to the problem of assessment introduced by radical empiricism. It became the mark of a legitimate physician and of a legitimate knower of medical knowledge. . . . The problems associated with the fragmented knowledge base were masked by the public unity of the profession through its professional associations. . . . regulars were able to use their institutional leverage to dampen the effects of government recognition of homeopaths. . . . Though government recognized homeopathy, the organizational strategy by the AMA ensured that this recognition did not translated into increased standing and access to resources without a long protracted fight. As an organizational gatekeeper for resources, the AMA circumvented a cultural, epistemological debate with homeopathy by excluding them from one . . . . epistemological debates can be (and often are) adjudicated, not through specific debates over the merits of some knowledge over others, but through organizations, which set the parameters of the debate, who can engage in it, and whether the debate can occur at all” (Whooley, 2009).