📂The post-print version is available here: doi.org/10.31234/osf...

🗒️Check out the other papers in the special issue here: www.sciencedirect.com/special-issu...

✨We argue for the need to shift from a “blind trust or no trust” position to one of vigilant trust: fostering a critical, but not cynical approach to science, one that acknowledges its faults and holds it accountable while valuing its ability to self-correct and produce reliable knowledge.

✨To tackle questionable health practices, we need not only to discredit pseudoscience, since this might push people into a generalized distrust mindset
✨We also need to build trust and redirect it towards reliable sources

✨We sketch out promising strategies to do so

✨We discuss the relationship between these beliefs and science, which is complex - some challenge both scientific knowledge and authority of, while some challenge just one aspect of science.

✨There is evidence that such questionable health practices are are rooted in widespread irrational beliefs (conspiratorial, paranormal and pseudoscientific).

✨Why do people simultaneously reject official medicine while favoring untested cures? Why are they selectively sceptic - giving due scrutiny to science-recommended practices, but abandoning this vigilance when embracing alternative health practices? In this paper, we deal with this paradox.

✨Questionable health behaviors, such as intentional non-adherence to medical recommendations and the use of traditional, complementary and alternative medicine pose a burden on public health, with over 90% of people across the globe reporting that they have engaged in such practices at least once

📂The materials, data and codes to replicate the findings are available openly on OSF: osf.io/dk8jh/

✨The obtained measurement invariance suggests that TCAM practices convey similar psychological meanings across countries/cultures and have similar patterns of use and that the instrument is a valid and useful tool for cross cultural research of TCAM use.

✨In the second study, we also relied on a multigroup CFA approach, where we found metric invariance of the structure across three countries (Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and the UK).

✨Across two studies, we identified and replicated a hierarchical structure with a second-order factor subsuming four first-order factors (alternative medical systems, new-age medicine, natural product-based medicine, and rituals/customs).

🌿🧘‍♀️📿🧴Traditional, complementary and alternative medicine (TCAM) includes a wide range of alternative healthcare practices - we set out to test for the most appropriate structure of a comprehensive instrument measuring TCAM use.