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Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Religion Skepticism/critical thinking

“Energy chelation” therapy: Scientific criticism meets common tropes of CAM apologists

It’s amazing how fast six months can pass, isn’t it? Well, almost six months, anyway, as it was five and a half months ago that I wrote about a particularly execrable example of quackademic medicine in the form of a study that actually looked at an “energy healing” modality known as “energy chelation” as a […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Religion Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Placebo effects are “proof” that God exists?

A couple of weeks ago, I made the observation that there seems to have been a–shall we say?–realignment in one of the central arguments that proponents of “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM) and “integrative medicine” (IM) make. Back in the day (say, a few years ago), such CAM practitioners and apologists used to try very, […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Pseudoscience Skepticism/critical thinking

Vaccines are “transhumanism” that subverts evolution?

In the more than a decade since I first discovered, to my shock, that there are actual people out there who not only don’t believe that vaccines are safe despite overwhelming evidence that they are but in fact believe that they don’t work and are dangerous, I thought I had seen every antivaccine argument out […]

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

If this is true, the Dutch must be drinking in lots of information!

If there’s one thing about homeopaths, it’s that they’re indefatigable in their dedication to their unique brand of pseudoscience. They’re also endlessly protean in their ability to induce their explanations for how homeopathy is supposed to “work” to evolve into endless forms not so beautiful. If it’s not the claim that “like cures like” is […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Intelligent design/creationism Medicine Physics Pseudoscience Science Skepticism/critical thinking

A profound misunderstanding of the significance of cranks in science

I’ve spent a lot of time over the years looking at cranks, examining crank science (i.e., pseudoscience), and trying to figure out how to inoculate people against crankery. Because I’m a physician, I tend to do it mostly in the realm of medicine by critically examining “alternative” medical claims and discussing the scientific basis of […]