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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Music Popular culture Quackery Religion

Russell Simmons: The latest celebrity antivaccinationist?

I hadn’t planned on writing about this again today. (How many times have I started a post with that phrase? I forget, but a lot. Sadly, developments frequently make me change my plans about blogging.) Here’s what made me change my plans It was a pair of Facebook posts on hip-hop and fashion mogul Russell […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Popular culture Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

A 50 minute infomercial for traditional Chinese medicine disguised as a radio show, courtesy of Colin McEnroe

When I wrote about YouYou Tu, the Chinese scientist who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for her successful identification, isolation, purification, and validation of Artemisinin, an antimalarial medication that was quite effective. It was also derived from an herbal remedy used in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), which has led a fair number […]

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Announcements Medicine

In which Orac co-authors a paper in the New England Journal of Medicine

Unfortunately, this happens to be a day when I didn’t really have much time to blog, as I had to go to an evening meeting last night related to my work. Fortunately, this corresponds with a most excellent day, a first in my life. Basically, I’m coauthor on a Perspective article published in today’s New […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Popular culture Pseudoscience Quackery Religion Skepticism/critical thinking

Cranks of a feather, part 3: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the antivaccine movement team up with the Nation of Islam to attack the CDC

No doubt, regular readers are probably somewhat surprised that I didn’t discuss the antivaccine rally scheduled to be held in Atlanta last weekend that I wrote about last week. As you might recall, this rally consisted of two crappy tastes that taste crappy together, namely Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the antivaccine movement together with […]

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Medicine Politics Science Skepticism/critical thinking

The “myth” of basic science?

I’m a clinician, but I’m actually also a translational scientist. It’s not uncommon for those of us in medicine involved in some combination of basic and clinical research to argue about exactly what that means. The idea is translational science is supposed to be the process of “translating” basic science discoveries into the laboratory into […]