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Medicine Surgery

The Chinese “Elephant Man”

This story is a couple of weeks old, but I’ve only just come across it. It reminds me that there may be some things worse than death, and this is one of them: To see the face of 32-year-old Huang Chuancai is to witness a rare genetic condition in its most terrible form. Chinese doctors […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Entertainment/culture Medicine Popular culture Quackery

Don Imus: He never fails to deliver the stupid when it comes to vaccines and autism

I’ll give Don Imus credit for one thing. He’s predictable and consistent. He never fails to deliver the stupid when it comes to vaccines and autism. True, his wife may take the stupid to hysterically malignant levels when she decides to rant about her belief in the undead myth that mercury in vaccines was a […]

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

Your Friday Dose of Woo: It’s all in the shoes, or is it?

One of the favorite failings in logic and science among the woo-friendly crowd is the ever-famous one of confusing correlation with causation, also known as non causa pro causa, which means “non-cause for the cause.” Examples of this are rampant, and include the antivaccinationists who confuse correlation with vaccination and the age at which autism […]

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Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Skepticism/critical thinking

Word of the day

Word of the day: “Quackademic medicine.” I love it. Dr. R.W. explains. I very well may have to steal that term. As they say about artists, good ones borrow but great ones steal. (Just living up to the arrogance of my namesake…)

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Announcements Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Skepticism/critical thinking

I wish I lived in Toronto…

…because then I could attend Dr. David Colquhoun’s lecture at the University of Toronto tomorrow. Dr. Colquhoun, for those not familiar with him, is the eminent pharmacologist with the name that is exceedingly difficult to remember how to spell who runs DC’s Improbable Science, an excellent skeptical, scientific, and medical blog that routinely takes on […]