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

Your Friday Dose of Woo: A “GEMM” of a bit of woo

If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the last couple of years of doing this little feature, it’s that there are a couple of kinds of woo. Actually, there are certainly more than a couple, but pretty much all woo can be divided into a couple of types. The first time is where the woo […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine History Medicine Quackery

The real appeal to ancient wisdom

As many who take an interest in this subject know, one of the most common arguments that advocates of various medical woo often make is the appeal to ancient wisdom. They seem to think that if a treatment is old (homeopathy, acupuncture, various “energy healing” methods), there must be something to it because otherwise it […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Accusations against skeptical physicians: 1. “You have no compassion”

Sometimes I wonder if subjecting myself to all this woo is going to my head. Why do I worry that this might be the case? Recently, I made the mistake of getting involved in an e-mail exchange with a prominent antivaccinationist. Perhaps it was my eternal optimism that led me to do this, my inability […]

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Humor Medicine Science Skepticism/critical thinking

How do you know when you’re doing science wrong?

Easy:

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Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

A perfect storm of quackademic medicine and bad journalism

I sometimes wonder if the world is laughing at me. Let me explain. A while ago I compiled a list of academic medical institutions that–shall we say?–are far more receptive to pseudoscientific and downright unscientific medicine in the form of so-called complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), otherwise known as “integrative medicine.” I dubbed this list […]