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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

A “homeopathic” bit of breast cancer “science,” or: Who knew alcohol was so toxic?

Homeopaths are irritating. They’re irritating for a number of reasons. One is their magical thinking, and, make no mistake, their thinking is nothing but pure magic, sympathetic magic to be precise. That’s all that the principle of “like cures like” really is at its heart. Normally, that principle states that “like produces like,” but homeopathy […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Quoth Mark “not a doctor, not a scientist” Blaxill: “Help, help, Andy Wakefield’s being repressed!”

Help! Help! I’m being repressed. Somehow, that is the image I have gotten in the three weeks since the very last shred of Andrew Wakefield’s facade of scientific respectability tumbled. As you may recall, at the end of January, the British General Medical Council found Andrew Wakefield, the man whose trial lawyer-funded, breathtakingly incompetent, and […]

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Bioethics Biology Medicine Science

Answering other arguments of animal rights extremists

I hadn’t really planned on writing anymore about animal rights extremists. The topic seemed as though it had played out over the few days. But those who’ve followed this blog know that I’m nothing if not tenacious when I grab onto a topic, and sometimes certain topics demand several posts. More importantly, over the last […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Entertainment/culture Medicine Quackery Television

Has Dr. Oz finally crossed the Woobicon?

I’ve had it with Dr. Oz. Although I haven’t seen his show today (for one thing, I work for a living; for another thing, even if I had today off I wouldn’t waste it watching Dr. Oz’s show), readers have informed me that yesterday, on March 1, 2010, Dr. Oz threw away whatever shred of […]

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Medicine Science

Computer simulations to “replace” animal research: Garbage in, garbage out

In my recent rehashing, rebranding, and repurposing an article addressing many of the flaws in the so-called scientific arguments against animal research often made by animal rights activists and extremists, I only briefly discussed one common argument among many, namely that computer simulations can replace the use of animals in medical research by modeling human […]