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Clinical trials Medicine

Neonatal death rates after home births and a strange skeptic kerfuffle

If there’s a topic that I don’t write about much, it’s obstetrics. The reason is that it’s not a major area of my interest, and it’s not an area where I have as much expertise as I do in, say, cancer or even vaccines. My expertise in cancer comes from my career, of course, and […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Politics Quackery

Reason.com defends the medical neglect of Sarah Hershberger

I realize that some of my readers will chide me for saying this, but I usually expect better of Reason. Although I sometimes have a tendency to be a bit—shall we say?—Insolent about libertarians when they pass from a reasonable defense of civil liberties into an Ayn Rand-inspired fantasy world in which the market cures […]

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Cancer Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Quackery

Attacks on the FDA on Mercola.com

I forgot if I ever mentioned that I have an article out in the current episode of Skeptical Inquirer about Stanislaw Burzynski. I call it a “primer for skeptics,” because that’s what it is. So, if you subscribe to SI (Skeptical Inquirer, not Sports Illustrated), read. If not, get thee to a newsstand before it’s […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Medicine Naturopathy Quackery

A finger in the dike isn’t enough

Every so often I wonder what the status is regarding the infiltration of pseudoscience into medicine. It’s something I’ve been writing about on a regular basis for nine years now, a phenomenon known as “quackademic medicine.” It’s simultaneously a depressing and energizing topic, energizing because it’s something I’m passionate about, but depressing because at times […]

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Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Release the Kraken! (I mean antivaccine “Thinkers.”)

Oh, dear. I didn’t think I’d be writing about that wretched hive of Dunning-Kruger scum and quackery, the most inaptly named website and blog of all time, The Thinking Moms’ Revolution (TMR), after having written about it just earlier this week. When last we visited this klatsch of smugly arrogant moms, one of them was […]