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Cancer Clinical trials History Medicine Skepticism/critical thinking

Vincent DeVita: We need more freedom to be mavericks. Orac: Not so much

One of my favorite television shows right now is The Knick, as I described before in a post about medical history. To give you an idea of how much I’m into The Knick, I’ll tell you that I signed up for Cinemax for three months just for that one show. (After its second season finale […]

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Biology Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Pseudoscience Skepticism/critical thinking

Germ theory denialism and the magical mystical microbiome

Whenever I point out that a very common thread of “thought”—if you can call it “thought”—in alternative medicine is nothing more than germ theory denialism, the usual reaction is incredulity. Newbies who haven’t encountered quacks before invariably do a double take when I inform them that germ theory denialism is a thing, particularly among antivaccine […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Paranormal Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

An Australian “energy healer” begs medicine to take him seriously

Even though I’ve taken on the ‘nym of a fictional computer in a 35-year-old British science fiction series whose key traits were an arrogant and condescending manner and the ability to tap into every computer of the galactic federation any time he wanted to, in reality I am just one person. That means, try as […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Quackery

Michigan HB 5126: Endangering children by making nonmedical vaccine exemptions easier to obtain

We have a problem with antivaccinationists here in Michigan. It’s a problem that’s been going on a long time that I first started paying attention to in a big way a few years ago when we started seeing pertussis outbreaks again due to low vaccine uptake. It’s a problem that’s persisted as last year we […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

An advertisement for Stanislaw Burzynski masquerading as a news story

Although I don’t write about him as much as I used to, there was a time a couple of years ago when Houston cancer quack Stanislaw Burzynski was a frequent topic of this blog. His story, detailed in many posts on this blog and in an article I wrote for Skeptical Inquirer, is one that […]