He is retired as an assistant clinical professor at Tufts University School of Medicine and anesthesiologist at Newton-Wellesley Hospital.

His long term interest in pseudoscience was piqued in 2000 by a nursing conference held at his hospital where therapeutic touch and other alternative healing practices were promoted as effective treatments for pleural mesothelioma.

Atwood represented the opposition to naturopathic physicians licensing in his state and was the primary author of the minority report opposing such licensure in Massachusetts.

[10] Atwood was a member of the Massachusetts Special Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medical Practitioners, which convened in 2000 after six attempts by naturopathic groups to become licensed as health care providers.

[15] He indicated the dangers of state and federal officials and Medicare legitimizing alternative medicine, and said that, while naturopaths may claim that their teachings are based on science, they are not supported by clinical research.

In a series of blog posts, Atwood said that EBM falls short in evaluating the claims of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM).

Under the guidelines of EBM, all health claims should be subjected to randomized controlled trials, including those of pseudoscientific "alternative medicine" practices like homeopathy.

[16] Atwood writes that clinical trials to investigate homeopathic claims are often backed by proponents of the practices, and tend to be small and of poor quality.

"[17] In 2008, Atwood was the lead author of "Why the NIH Trial to Assess Chelation Therapy (TACT) Should Be Abandoned",[18] a Medscape article criticizing the National Institute of Health (NIH) and the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) for spending US$30 million on the Trial to Assess Chelation Therapy (TACT).

Chelation therapy is a high risk (including death), medical procedure used to remove heavy metals from the body.

The criticism by Atwood is summarized: We have investigated the method and the trial.... We present evidence that chelationists and their organization, the American College for Advancement in Medicine, used political connections to pressure the NIH to fund the TACT.

Critics also note that nearly two dozen trial co-investigators have been disciplined by state medical boards for infractions ranging from insurance fraud to providing ineffective treatments.

[20]Atwood said in 2012 that the results of TACT research agreed with his 2008 prediction: they were ambiguous and the authors could not recommend chelation therapy for CAD.