Since its very inception five years ago, The Huffington Post has been, to steal a phrase from Star Wars, a wretched hive of scum and villainy, at least when it comes to anything resembling medicine. Of course, that’s the problem. Very little, if anything, published in HuffPo resembles actual science-based medicine. The vast majority of […]
Category: Medicine
First, it was anti-vaccine “martyr” Andrew Wakefield’s infamous 1998 Lancet paper. Then it was his equally incompetent 2009 NeuroToxicology paper. Now it’s Wakefield’s 2000 American Journal of Gastroenterology paper: Errata, Corrigenda and Retractions Am J Gastroenterol 2010; 105:1214; doi:10.1038/ajg.2010.149 Retraction: Enterocolitis in Children With Developmental Disorders A J Wakefield, A Anthony, S H Murch, M […]
After diving into a heapin’ helpin’ of sheer craziness over the last week or two (well, except for yesterday, when I deconstructed an acupuncture study, which, while not crazy, certainly was misguided), I think it’s time for a bit of self-absorbed navel gazing. After all, isn’t that what bloggin’s all about? Oh, wait, that’s what […]
A couple of weeks ago I made what I thought to be a rather obvious observation, namely that the anti-vaccine crank blog Age of Autism is anti-vaccine, not, as it claims, pro-safe vaccine. One bit of the copious evidence that belies the claim is the obsessive focus of that blog on Gardasil. Even if science […]
Of all the “alternative” therapies out there, arguably the most studied is the modality known as acupuncture. Perhaps the reason is that, unlike homeopathy, which based on physics, chemistry, and biology alone is so implausible that, for it to “work,” huge swaths of well-established physics and chemistry would have to be shown to be not […]
