I have a personal bias against hypnotherapy because I see it as a type of brain washing.. a kind of metal "trickery".. but if I don't see great harm in trying it out--certainly not as harmful as smoking itself.

Nicontine replacement therapy (NRT), I suspect has gone through some scientific scrutiny but I don't know how effective it is.

I would say more people have tried NRT and not that many have tried hypnotherapy..so it's hard to say. I suppose I would be more skeptical of hypnotherapy.

"in regards to smoking cessation.. would you be more skeptical on the efficacy of hypnotherapy or that of nicotine replacement therapy? why?"

This is something of an odd question, to my mind. It seems to define skepticism as a resistance to believing in the effectiveness of something, so that one might be more "opposed" to one belief than another.

While this is undoubtedly valid to some extent (there are some claims that have been disproven so many times, or that would require such an extensive revision of our existing understanding of the universe, that they require extraordinary evidence), my first impulse is to respond that I haven't seen any data either way, so either or both of these methods might be effective, or might not. Skepticism is the interest in seeing the data before forming an opinion, so you can't be "more skeptical" of one belief than of another.

Of course, another way of reading the question is which of these methods seems more superficially plausible. Even there, I am stumped. Smoking cessation involves two parts - breaking a pharmacological addiction and breaking a behavioral addiction. I'd think, offhand, that hypnotherapy would be more effective against the behavioral aspect, and NRT against the pharmacological aspect. Thus, I can think of a plausible mechanism of action for each, and can't really choose which might be more likely to be effective.

Sorry for such an unhelpful reply... early morning... neurons not really cranked up yet.

Everyone is different with smoking. Hypnotherapy is said to work for some but for me it worked for maybe 24 hours. I know people that it worked for but most of those were not really heavy smokers that were probably about to quit cold turkey anyways. So I am pretty skeptical about using it. The patch kept me from smoking while I was on it but never stopped thinking about smoking the whole time. The only thing that worked for me was Zyban aka Wellbutrin. Every smoker is different so it is impossible to say any program is right or wrong.