Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Quackery

AutismOne: A “Warrior Mother” and pseudoscience

One way that pseudoscience tries to maintain a patina of respectability to the outside world, a patina that sometimes even manages to take in researchers unacquainted with its methods, is through the “research conference” that has all the trappings of a research meeting but whose topics reveal the pseudoscience at the heart of it all. […]

Categories
Clinical trials Medicine Politics Surgery

When human subjects protection stifles innovation, part II

Back in late December, I came across an op-ed piece in the New York Times written by Dr. Atul Gawande, general and endocrine surgeon and author of Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect Science and Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance, that struck me as a travesty of what our system for protecting human […]

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Entertainment/culture Medicine Quackery Television

Is Bill Maher really that ignorant? (Part III): “Oh, come on, Superman!”

You can read parts I and II first, if you like. Yet another reason Bill Maher is an idiot can be found in the video below, taken from Real Time With Bill Maher from the February 8 episode. I happened to catch it in reruns and was looking for a transcript or YouTube version. It’s […]

Categories
Complementary and alternative medicine Computers and social media Medicine Quackery

Woo-hoo! The Quackometer’s back!

I recently wrote about the cowardly manner in which Netcetera booted the Quackometer off of its servers unceremoniously in response to a truly vacuous legal threat from a quack named Joseph Chikelue Obi. Now, the little black duck has found a new ISP. The Quackometer is back in business! Hilariously, “Dr.” Obi is already making […]

Categories
Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Irresponsibility to the nth power: Homeopaths treating HIV in Africa

Anyone who reads this blog knows my opinion of homeopathy. Just type “homeopathy” in the little search box on the left side of this blog, and you’ll be greeted with many, many posts dating back to the very beginnings of Orac’s presence on ScienceBlogs. Of course, science is with me on this one, as it […]