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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Naturopathy Quackery Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Quackademic medicine now reigns supreme at the Cleveland Clinic

Quackery has been steadily infiltrating academic medicine for at least two decades now in the form of what was once called “complementary and alternative medicine” but is now more commonly referred to as “integrative medicine.” Of course, as I’ve written many times before, what “integrative medicine” really means is the “integration” of quackery with science- […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Medicine Naturopathy Quackery

Mike Adams and “natural biopreparedness” against Ebola and pandemics

This one will be much shorter than usual, mainly because I was out late last night for a dinner function at which I was on a panel of breast cancer experts. I must admit, even after having been an attending surgeon for 15 years, it never ceases to make me feel a bit weird to […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

It’s not just oil pulling, it’s ozone-infused oil pulling!

As I so love to remind my readers, I’ve been at this blogging thing a long time now. In early December, it will have been a full decade since that strange, cold, dreary winter afternoon (well, technically late fall) when, inspired by an article in TIME Magazine about blogging, sat down in front of my […]

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Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Deepak Chopra tries his hand at a clinical trial. Woo ensues.

Of all the quacks and cranks and purveyors of woo whom I’ve encountered over the years, Deepak Chopra is, without a doubt, one of the most arrogantly obstinate, if not the most arrogantly obstinate. Sure, a quack like Mike Adams wins on sheer obnoxiousness and for the sheer breadth of crankery to which he ascribes, […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Quackery Surgery

Homeopathy for hemorrhoids? What a pain in the…well, you know

In a past life, before I became so specialized, I was a general surgeon. Like all surgical oncologists and even breast surgeons, before I became a specialist, I had to do a general surgery residency. In addition to the usual cancer problems a general surgeon faces, the two most common being breast and colon cancer, […]