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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Humor Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

I am Spartacus! or: Orac applies some Insolence to a rather confused antivaccine blogger

I’ve used my current pseudonym since at least the late 1990s, first on Usenet and then on the first incarnation of this blog. Not surprisingly in retrospect (although it surprised me at the time), people who didn’t like me began trying back in the 1990s to “unmask” me. It began with Holocaust deniers. No, I’m […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Popular culture Pseudoscience Quackery Science

How would you like your placenta? Broiled or freeze-dried?

After nearly 11 years (!) at this blogging thing, I thought I had covered pretty much every medical topic a skeptic and supporter of science-based medicine would be interested in covering. However, if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, it’s that there’s always something I’ve missed, some hole in my blogging oeuvre that […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Medicine Naturopathy Pseudoscience Skepticism/critical thinking

Respect my authoritah on “integrative medicine”!

David Katz doesn’t much like skeptics, particularly those of us who question the value of “integrative medicine.” In fairness, I can’t say that I much blame him. We have been very critical of his writings and talks over the years to my criticism of his statement advocating a “more fluid concept of evidence” more than […]

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Biology Medicine Politics Pseudoscience Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Ben Carson: A case study on why intelligent people are often not skeptics

As a surgeon, I find Ben Carson particularly troubling. By pretty most reports, he was a skilled neurosurgeon who practiced for three decades, rising to the chief of neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins. Yet, when he ventures out of the field of neurosurgery—even out of his own medical specialty—he routinely lays down some of the dumbest […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Popular culture Pseudoscience Science Skepticism/critical thinking

A sad day for public science advocacy

I’ve been at this blogging thing for more than a decade now. Looking back on those years, I find it incredible that I’ve lasted this long. For one thing, I still marvel that there are apparently thousands of people out there who still like to read my nearly daily musings (or, as George Carlin would […]