Categories
Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Skepticism/critical thinking

Perception and reality in acupuncture

Last week, I wrote about an overhyped acupuncture study that purported to show (but didn’t, really) that acupuncture is more effective than “conventional” therapy in the treatment of low back pain. This story reverberated through the Internet and blogosphere as “proof” that acupuncture “works” when in reality the study was very weak evidence of any […]

Categories
Cancer Clinical trials Medicine

Dichloroacetate to enter clinical trials in cancer patients

I’ve written a lot about dichloroacetate, a.k.a. DCA (my last post here, along with links to my previous posts), the small molecule drug that burst onto the scene after Evangelos Michelakis of the University of Alberta published a paper in Cancer Cell in January describing strong anti-tumor activity in preclinical models (in this case, a […]

Categories
Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Religion

Jesus is growing her a new leg! Or is he?

One of the best retorts to the claims of faith healers is the simple question: If faith healing works such miracles, why has there never been a documented case of faith healing regrowing an amputated limb? Now that would be truly miraculous. That would make even a curmudgeonly old skeptic like me sit up an […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Humor Medicine Quackery

Seen at the local Barnes & Noble Bookstore last night…

I think the title says it all. Perfect! Whoever wrote the book sure knows her potential readers!

Categories
Humor Medicine News of the Weird Science

How can I get a research project like this one going? (Or Saturday strange and fun science)

Science and medicine are beautiful things. The range of knowledge and research that can be encompassed under their rubric is truly astounding. Indeed, some scientists have all the luck. Some scientists seem to have all the luck. Some scientists seem able to latch onto the best projects: London, England (CNS) – There is one scientist […]