Categories
Bioethics Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Quackery Science

The Guatemala syphilis experiment, human subjects research abuses, and CAM

If there’s one thing that burns me about so-called “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM) clinical trials, it’s how unethical many of them are. This is particularly true for trials that test modalities that, on the basic science grounds alone, can be dismissed as so highly implausible and with such a low prior probability of success […]

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Cancer Medicine

Some Sunday reading for you

As I recover from the joy of deadlines, I decided to take the weekend off from blogging (new material, at least). In the meantime, here’s some good Sunday reading for you, the Cancer Research Blog Carnival. The Insolence shall return tomorrow. And there are, unfortunately, many deserving targets, not all of them woo.

Categories
Biology Medicine Quackery Religion Science

Your Friday Dose of Woo: In which I am given a woo-ducation in neuroscience

Every so often, real life intrudes on blogging, preventing the creation of fresh Insolence, at least Insolence of the quality that you’ve come to expect. This is one of those times, thanks to R01 deadlines. So enjoy this bit of Classic Insolence from back in September 2007 that, shockingly, as far as I can tell […]

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Entertainment/culture Medicine Music Science

Russian Roulette: The patented Orac NIH R01 distraction open thread

It just occurred to me that it’s been a long, long time since I’ve done this, but how about an open thread to while away the time until the NIH R01 grant application is submitted, and that gloriously irritating and outrageously beautiful not-so-Respectful Insolence that you all crave can come roaring back with a vengeance? […]

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

While I’m otherwise indisposed…

…take a gander at this post by Steve Novella about Gary Kompothecras and Charlie Crist and how they are endangering children’s health in Florida by promoting the father-son team of antivaccine pseudoscientists Mark and David Geier, the very same issue I wrote about yesterday. Fear not. The end is in sight. The logorrheic insolence you […]