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 […]

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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 […]

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Humor Medicine Science

What kind of PI am I?

For those not in academic biomedical research, “PI” stands for “principal investigator”; i.e., the person who wrote the grant that funds the laboratory effort and (usually) the leader of the laboratory. Unlike Revere, I’ve only been a PI for around 8 years and an NIH-funded PI for only around two and a half years, I […]

Categories
Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Homeopathy debate at the University of Connecticut: Is it ever wise for scientists to debate pseudoscientists?

Regular readers know that I’ve long been disturbed by the increasing infiltration of non-evidence-based “alternative” medical therapies into academic medical centers (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8). I’ve come across another example of how much this has occurred. This time around, it’s come in the form of a “debate” being held at 2 […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

The “Jenny McCarthy effect”: More credulity towards autism quackery

I was thinking of calling this post Jenny McCarthy and Julie Deardorff: Two crappy tastes that taste crappy together, but I’ve already used that joke with Jenny McCarthy and Oprah Winfrey. Besides, Julie Deardorff isn’t nearly as famous as Oprah, although, as I’ve discussed before, she’s probably even more credulous than Oprah towards the lastest […]