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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Medicine

Legal thuggery, antivaccine edition: Andrew Wakefield sues Brian Deer, the BMJ, and Fiona Godlee

If there’s one thing that a crank, quack, pseudoscientist, or anti-vaccine propagandist doesn’t like, it’s having the light of day shined upon his activities. In fact, so much do they hate it that they have a distressing tendency to respond to science-based criticism not with science-based rebuttals (mainly because they can’t given that they don’t […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Humor Medicine Quackery

I love it when you call me Big Pharma

Finally, I think I’ve found this blog’s theme song: As I’ve asked so many times before: Dammit! Where’s all that filthy big pharma lucre I’ve been told by quacks, cranks, and antivaccinationists that I’m getting for toeing the big pharma line? After all, if I’m going to work so hard as a pharma shill, I […]

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Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

Credulous reporting on placebo effects strikes again

Let’s face it. The vast majority of “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM) or “integrative medicine” (IM) therapies are nothing more than placebo medicine. This should be so abundantly clear to readers who have followed this blog, Science-Based Medicine, and/or Neurologica Blog more than a few weeks that I shouldn’t have to repeat it yet again, […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Combining energy woo with The Secret

As hard as it to believe, it’s 2012 now. (I know, I know, I say that pretty much every year.) I’ve also been on vacation for the last week, which makes getting back into the swing of things a bit difficult. For one thing, we seem to have suffered an infestation of particularly brain dead […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics

Which alt-med is which Republican candidate?

Best analogy ever? I think it’s a contender, straight from Balloon Juice: The Republican party in Iowa reminds me of a patient with a terminal disease (Romneyitis) desperately turning to alternative medacine. They’ve cycled through homeopathy (Bachmann), naturopathy (Cain), chelation (Perry) and aromatherapy (Paul). Now they’ve hit the final frontier–urotherapy. I’m glad that I’ve never […]