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

Your Friday Dose of Woo: Who needs statins? Or: Sacrifice the teeth to remove those toxins!

Some woo is very, very complicated. The reason, of course, is that the often self-contradicting complexity of this sort of woo serves to make it harder for people without specialized training to figure out easily that it makes no sense scientifically. It’s more a matter of baffling ’em with bullshit than because such complexity is […]

Categories
Announcements Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

The 72nd Meeting of the Skeptics’ Circle: Sister Mary Elephant strikes

This has been a bad week at skeptics’ school. Apparently, skeptical bloggers have been misbehaving left and right. Apparently we as the skeptical blogosphere have been very, very naughty indeed. Worse, the essays that we’ve handed in are apparently not pleasing to the teacher. Worst of all, we’ve been mischievously copying a screed against homeopaths […]

Categories
Bioethics Cancer Clinical trials Medicine Politics Religion

Abortion and breast cancer: The Chicago Tribune feeds the myth

I approach this topic with a bit of trepidation. I say this not because I’m unsure that I’m correct in my assessment of the article that I’m about to apply some Respectful Insolence™ to. Rather, it’s because the last time I brought up anything having to do with abortion, it got ugly. The topic is […]

Categories
Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

That’s a relief

Wow, after my post about Le Canard Noir‘s being threatened with legal action for criticizing the Society of Homeopaths, I’m glad to know that I won’t be being sued for having reposted his criticism. Whines the Society of Homeopaths: The Society of Homeopaths took the content of the 2006 BBC Newsnight programme on malaria very […]

Categories
Cancer Medicine

Does a positive attitude prolong cancer survival?

I’ve always wondered, as I’m sure many of my readers have, whether human beings have it in them to delay their own death, even briefly. Very early in the history of this blog, a mere 11 days after I started it, I discussed a study that strongly suggested that we cannot. In brief, it looked […]