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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

A patient you won’t hear about from Stanislaw Burzynski or his apologists

It’s been a while since I mentioned Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski, the Houston doctor who has somehow managed over the last thirty-plus years to treat cancer patients with something he calls “antineoplastons” without ever actually producing strong evidence that they actually cure patients, increase the chances of long-term survival, or even improve disease-free progression. Although there […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Surveying the “integrative medicine” landscape (2012 edition)

One of the most potent strategies used by promoters of “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM)–or, as its proponents like to call it these days, “integrative medicine” (IM)–is in essence an argumentum ad populum; i.e., an appeal to popularity. Specifically, they like to use the variant of argumentum ad populum known as the “bandwagon effect,” in […]

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Medicine Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Oh, no! School wi-fi is making our kids sick! (2012 edition)

As I survey the lack of reason that infests–nay, permeates every fiber of–my country, sometimes I despair. Whether it’s because of the freak fest that the race for the Republican nomination has become, with each candidate seemingly battling to prove he can bring home the crazier crazy than any of the others, or antiscience running […]

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Clinical trials Medicine

A study that oversells massage therapy

If there’s one form of so-called “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM) that I find more tolerable than most, it’s massage therapy. The reason, of course, is that, whatever else anyone claims about massage, there’s no doubt that it feels good. All too often, however, massage therapists ruin a perfectly good massage by imposing pseudoscientific and […]

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Medicine Religion

An uncomfortable question

Work called last night. (It happens.) Basically, I had two deadlines for two big things (finishing reviewing the grants assigned to me for study section and a major writeup for a project for my job). Unfortunately, both of them were today. I realized as I perused old posts that I hadn’t reposted this one in […]