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Complementary and alternative medicine Quackery

Legal thuggery threatens another skeptic

I hate to admit it, but I’ve known about this story since Friday night, when I received a couple of e-mails about it. I had meant to mention it here either over the weekend or on Monday, but I’m a bit like Dug the Dog in the movie Up. Think of it this way: Squirrel! […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

American Academy of Family Physicians embraces quackademic medicine

In a week and a half, Harriet Hall, Kimball Atwood, and I will be joining Eugenie C. Scott at CSICon to do a session entitled Teaching Pseudoscience in Medical (and Other) Schools. As you might imagine, we will be discussing the infiltration of pseudoscience into medical academia and medical training, a phenomenon I frequently refer […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Quackery

A slightly different alternative medicine cancer cure testimonial

And now for something completely different… Well, not really. It’s a little different, but regular readers will soon recognize it as a variation on the same old theme. One topic I’ve been writing about since the very beginning of this blog is the alternative medicine cancer cure testimonial, or, more specifically, the breast cancer cure […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

One more example of the price of refusing science-based cancer therapy

Another year, another Breast Cancer Awareness Month. While most people who have either been touched by breast cancer or who have a professional interest in it, the significance of Breast Cancer Awareness Month is that it is a time, well, to increase awareness and to promote breast cancer research. There is another side to Breast […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Pseudoscience Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Why it’s not a good idea to respond to cranks, quacks, or pseudoscientists

One of the hazards of standing up for science and science-based medicine (and against cranks) is that some of these cranks will try to contact you at work. That’s why I have a policy about blog-related e-mails sent to me work address, and that policy is that I usually ignore them, whereas I might actually […]