Categories
Cancer Medicine Politics Pseudoscience Skepticism/critical thinking

It’s nice when your efforts are appreciated by those who need them the most…

…at least, that was my first reaction when I first read this reaction by the Karen Malec of the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer to posts by Mark Chu-Carroll and myself pointing out the numerous flaws in the latest “study” being circulated to “support” a link between abortion and breast cancer. Then I thought about it. […]

Categories
Clinical trials Medicine Surgery

Don’t get sick in July?

Dave Munger and others have been spearheading an effort to promote the acceptance of a specific logo that science bloggers (ScienceBloggers, included) can use to let the reader know that the topic of a blog post is a discussion of real, peer-reviewed research. Use of the logo, which I’ve used for this post, means a […]

Categories
Entertainment/culture Medicine Popular culture Television

What cigarette do you smoke, Doctor?

These days, pretty much everyone, smokers included, knows that smoking is bad for you. It promotes lung cancer (and several other varieties of cancer as well), heart disease, emphysema, and a number of other health problems. If you ask most smokers, they will tell you that they’d like to quit but have found it very […]

Categories
Medicine News of the Weird Surgery

“I don’t know how it got there. No, really!”

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about a favorite topic for amusement among general surgeons, rectal foreign bodies, particularly the strange things people like to stick up their bottoms for whatever reason. I pointed out at the time that sometimes the excuses such patients make when seeking medical attention are a bit–shall we say?–hard […]

Categories
Complementary and alternative medicine Humor Medicine Quackery

Two not-so-different things

As usual, Cectic nails it (click on comic for the full-size version): Although I find it odd that the “mark” in the above comic would be calling for his checkbook rather than his credit card, it never ceases to amaze me how skeptical some people can be when dealing with financial matters while at the […]