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Cancer Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Science

Quoth Dean Ornish and NCCAM: Your randomized clinical trials can’t study my CAM!

Practitioners of “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM) have a love-hate relationship with randomized clinical trials (RCTs). Actually, it’s mostly hate, but they do crave the validation that only randomized clinical trials can provide within the paradigm of evidence-based medicine (EBM). Yes, I intentionally said EBM, rather than science-based medicine (SBM), because, as I’ve described so […]

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Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Still more oversold placebo research from our old friend Ted Kaptchuk

Here we go again. In the wake of study after study that fails to find activity of various “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM) beyond that of placebo, the campaign to a “rebrand” CAM as “working” through the “power of placebo” continues apace, in the wake of the successful campaign to “rebrand” various needle-based medical modalities […]

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Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Television

A counterpoint to Jenny McCarthy’s autism narrative

There was a time when I used to blog about Jenny McCarthy a lot. The reason, of course, is that a few years ago, beginning in around 2007, she seized the title of face of the antivaccine movement in America through her “advocacy” for her son Evan, whom she described as having been made autistic […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

Influenza still kills

I realize that everyone, is looking forward to my deconstruction of Mike Adams’ quacktacular attempt at being a real scientist (well, some of you, anyway). I must confess, though. I was a bit disappointed. And, being like Dug the Dog (a comparison I so frequently make), my attention was easily distracted. I’m sure I’ll get […]

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Cancer Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

It’s 2014, and Stanislaw Burzynski has begun his counteroffensive

Well, that didn’t take long. I knew it had been too quiet on the Burzynski front. In retrospect, that was almost certainly because of the holidays, but the holidays are over, and real life is here again. Yes, the year 2014 is only a little more than a week old, and here comes Stanislaw Burzynski […]