Since 2012 was rung in a month and a half ago, I’ve been writing a lot more about placebo medicine than I have in a while. Specifically, I’ve written a lot more about placebo effects than usual. This proliferation of posts on the topic was sparked by how Harvard University’s very own not-a-PhD faculty, credulous […]
Category: Quackery
It’s been a while since I mentioned Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski, the Houston doctor who has somehow managed over the last thirty-plus years to treat cancer patients with something he calls “antineoplastons” without ever actually producing strong evidence that they actually cure patients, increase the chances of long-term survival, or even improve disease-free progression. Although there […]
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One of the most potent strategies used by promoters of “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM)–or, as its proponents like to call it these days, “integrative medicine” (IM)–is in essence an argumentum ad populum; i.e., an appeal to popularity. Specifically, they like to use the variant of argumentum ad populum known as the “bandwagon effect,” in […]
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As I survey the lack of reason that infests–nay, permeates every fiber of–my country, sometimes I despair. Whether it’s because of the freak fest that the race for the Republican nomination has become, with each candidate seemingly battling to prove he can bring home the crazier crazy than any of the others, or antiscience running […]
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Way back in the day, when I first encountered antivaccine views in that wretched Usenet swamp of pseudoscience, antiscience, and quackery known as misc.health.alternative, there was one particular antivaccine lie that disturbed me more than just about any other. No, it wasn’t the claim that vaccines cause autism, the central dogma of the antivaccine movement. […]
