Categories
Cancer Clinical trials Medicine Politics

In which my words will be misinterpreted as “proof” that I am a “pharma shill”

I would have written about this one on Friday, except that Your Friday Dose of Woo had to be served up. (You did read last week’s YFDoW, didn’t you? It was a particularly loopy bit of woo, with a bad computer interface grafted on to it, to boot!) The reason I wanted to write about […]

Categories
Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

Is evidence-based medicine “sufficient” for alternative medicine research?

One of the consistent themes of this blog since the very beginning has been that alternative medicine treatments, before being accepted, should be subject to the same standards of evidence as “conventional” medical therapies. When advocates of evidence-based medicine (EBM) like myself say this, we are frequently treated with excuses from advocates of alternative medicine […]

Categories
Cancer Clinical trials Medicine Skepticism/critical thinking

Obviously a male conspiracy is at work here

Two days after the holidays are over, and I’m still taking care of unfinished business from last year. Still, the study I’m about to discuss is making the rounds of the blogosphere, and because it’s about breast cancer risk I felt the need to weigh in. This is particularly true, given some of the representations […]

Categories
Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

A particularly egregious misrepresentation of a study

While I am on vacation, I’m reprinting a number of “Classic Insolence” posts to keep the blog active while I’m gone. (It also has the salutory effect of allowing me to move some of my favorite posts from the old blog over to the new blog, and I’m guessing that quite a few of my […]

Categories
Cancer Clinical trials Medicine Surgery

On the messiness of evidence-based medicine

I’m about a week late on this one. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if some of my readers were wondering why I hadn’t weighed in on this story when it broke late last week. (Either that, or no one was wondering, and I’m just displaying some of my surgeon’s ego for all to see.) […]