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Bioethics Cancer Clinical trials Medicine Politics

Dichloroacetate and The DCA Site: A low bar for “success” (part 2)

Be careful what you ask for; you just might get it. I say this in light of a commenter, who decided to show up in one of my old posts to claim “positive results” from dichloroacetate (DCA), the small molecule experimental cancer drug that has shown promising activity in rat models of cancer but has […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Humor Medicine Quackery

Alternative medicine and “alternative” methods of payment?

I don’t know where EoR finds this stuff, but I like the way Deborah Ross thinks when she discusses offering alternative medical practitioners alternative methods of payment. Not surprisingly, they aren’t interested: There has been much fuss this week about the ‘scientific status’ of homeopathy, just as there is always a fuss about ‘alternative’ treatments […]

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Friday Woo Humor Medicine Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

A Trifecta of Bonus Friday Woo: The SCIO woomeister, L. Vincent Poupard, and a fundamentalist Christian have appeared in my comments

Remember the SCIO? It was featured in Your Friday Dose of Woo two weeks ago. It’s an amazingly woo-ey piece of woo that was just perfect for my little weekly feature. Unfortunately, not everyone appreciates my having a little fun with it. For example, one of the woomeisters responsible for the SCIO has appeared on […]

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Friday Woo Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Your Friday Dose of Woo: Neo-Homeopathic Magneto Geometric boners

I really love Life Technology™. I really do. Heck, I could spend the next several weeks mining it for topics for Your Friday Dose of Woo. The stuff there’s so over-the-top that I find it hard to believe that these guys are serious. I mean, really, look at some of their products, a couple of […]

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

If randomized clinical trials don’t show that your woo works, try anthropology!

A common refrain among practitioners and advocates of alternative medicine is that the reason randomized clinical trials frequently fail to find any objective evidence of clinical efficacy for their favorite woo is because, in essence, science is not the right tool to evaluate whether it works. In essence, they either appeal to other ways of […]