Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

The (not so) Thinking Moms’ (D)evolution continues apace

About a week ago, I took note of what appears to be a new offshoot of the antivaccine movement known as the Thinking Moms’ Revolution (TMR). At the time, I pointed out the toxic combination of hubris mixed with ignorance that resulted in a risible “declaration of independence” from “medical tyranny.” In reality, it was […]

Categories
Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Science fiction/fantasy Skepticism/critical thinking

Now there’s some “anti-science”…

I’m sometimes criticized for referring to various people who are “anti-science” as, well, “anti-science.” People, for whatever reason, have a hard time believing that anyone is anti-science; so when I point out how much, for example, antivaccinationists, alternative medicine believers, or creationists are anti-science, they have a had time believing it. This is particularly true […]

Categories
Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Acupuncture and COPD? Not so fast…

I acquiesce. I know that I’m not going to have a lot of control over my selection of blogging material for a given day when I see more than one or two requests for an analysis of an article. So it was, when links like these were showing up in my e-mail: Acupuncture May Help […]

Categories
Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

“Plausibility bias”? Try “reality bias” when it comes to clinical trials.

Last week, I pointed out that, when referring to a therapy and considering whether it should be tested in clinical trials, plausibility does not mean knowing the mechanism. Today, I intend to elaborate a bit on that. As my jumping-off point, I couldn’t ask for anything better (if you can call it that) than an […]

Categories
Complementary and alternative medicine Friday Woo Medicine Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Your Friday Dose of Woo: Heal your genome?

It’s been a while since I’ve done a bit of Your Friday Dose of Woo, and I actually kind of miss it. It’s not that there hasn’t been anything that hasn’t been worthy of this “honor” for a while. On the other hand, there hasn’t been anything in a while that combines just the right […]