How Often. .

How often do medical and obstetric society members actually engage with the home birth or the larger birth advocacy communities? Likewise, how often are home birth advocates invited to speak to a medical society, serve on a study group, or participate in the writing of a position statement? This insularity on each side fosters stereotyping of opponents, for example, the repeated referral by home birth opponents to certified professional midwives as “lay midwives.”

I’d say about just as often as snakeoil peddlers are invited to the conferences of actual doctors of medicine and as often as biologists allow creationists to participate in writing their position statements.

The reluctance of legitimate scholars to engage in debates with crazy charlatans is to the credit of said scholars. It is kind of weird to accuse them of not wasting their time on dangerous idiots.