Categories
Bioethics Cancer Clinical trials Medicine Quackery

An uninformative “experiment” on dichloroacetate (DCA) and cancer

I hadn’t planned on writing about dichloroacetate, the inexpensive compound whose success in treating experimental cancer in rats that provoked a blogopheric storm about a “cancer cure” that would supposedly never see the light of day because it’s not patentable. After all, I’ve done about seven posts on the topic, give or take a couple, […]

Categories
Humor Medicine Science

Science merit badges for Orac!

This one’s been floating around the science blogosphere for about a week or two now. I tried to resist its pull, but finally I have given in and decided that, if you’ve got it, flaunt it, baby! In any case, I’m talking about a bunch of merit badges for scientists (a.k.a. “The Order of Science […]

Categories
Evolution Intelligent design/creationism Medicine Pseudoscience Skepticism/critical thinking Surgery

Slinking away in shame over my profession yet again (another surgeon behaving badly over evolution)

You know, I’m really tired of this. I’m tired of my fellow physicians with a penchant for spouting scientifically ignorant “attacks” on or “doubts” about evolution. It embarrasses the hell out of me around ScienceBlogs, and I really wish they would stop it. Sadly, it seems to be an increasingly long list. Although I first […]

Categories
Medicine Surgery

Well, I’m glad they finally found a good use for stem cell therapy

It figures, it really does, that this would have to be one of the first clinical uses of stem cells that they’d come up with. The really weird thing about this article is its schizophrenic nature. It starts out with a sensationalistic description of the new use of stem cells, and then it describes the […]

Categories
Friday Woo Medicine Paranormal Pseudoscience Skepticism/critical thinking

Your Friday Dose of Woo: The Color of Woo (Green, Of Course!)

Like most people, I like making money. True, it’s not the main goal of my life (otherwise I definitely wouldn’t be in academics), but, all in all, it’s better to be comfortably off than to be poor. And, as I’ve said before, although I could make more in private practice, I don’t do too badly […]