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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Irony meter melting, must back off

I thought it was an April Fools’ joke, but it wasn’t. It was posted one day too late, but there it was staring at me: On World Autism Day: A Plea for Better Journalism. On the surface, who could argue with that, particularly with David Kirby’s regular carpet-bombing logic and science with unctuous and slimy […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Sham acupuncture is better than “true” acupuncture!

Believe it or not, there was a time when I didn’t consider acupuncture to be a form of woo. I know, I know, it’s hard to believe, given the sorts of posts I’ve done recently on acupuncture, but it’s true. Certainly, I didn’t believe the whole rigamarole about needles somehow “restoring the flow of qi” […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Religion

Relying on prayer instead of medicine

This happened last week when I was feeling under the weather, and somehow I never got around to it. Fortunately, however, I’ve learned that there may indeed by justice in the case of Madeline Neuman, the 11-year-old child whose parents let her die of diabetic ketoacidosis. This story was widely reported thusly: “We just believe […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

An appropriate topic for April Fools’ Day

In the three years that I’ve been blogging, one thing I’ve learned about myself is that I’m not very good at coming up with good April Fools’ Day posts. Yes, I have tried it before. For example, a couple of years ago, I tried to make everyone believe that I had gone soft on woo, […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Selling homeopathy to pediatricians

I’ve never been able to figure out how anyone who claims to be devoted to science and scientific medicine can take homeopathy the least bit seriously. None of it makes any sense scientifically. Its basic principal of the “Law of Similars” has far more basis in the concepts of sympathetic magic than anything that science […]