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

Yawn…another overhyped acupuncture study

Never let it be said that Orac doesn’t give the people what they want. Well, most of the time, anyway. What I’m referring to is a recent German study about acupuncture for low back pain that’s been making its way around the media. I had actually been planning on commenting about it yesterday, but Iranian […]

Categories
Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Science Skepticism/critical thinking

The cranks pile on John Ioannidis’ work on the reliability of science

Pity poor John Ioannidis. The man does provocative work about the reliability of scientific studies as published in the peer-reviewed literature, and his reward for trying to point out shortcomings in how we as scientists and clinical researchers do studies and evaluate evidence is to be turned into an icon for cranks and advocates of […]

Categories
Complementary and alternative medicine Friday Woo Medicine Paranormal Religion Skepticism/critical thinking

Your Friday Dose of Woo: In which I am given a woo-ducation in neuroscience

As I usually do on Thursday nights, I was perusing my legendary Folder of Woo looking for just the thing to be interesting and entertaining to both me as the blogger and you as the reader. As happens occasionally, nothing was really doing it for me. Nothing was getting me fired up to launch into […]

Categories
Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

The story of the 17-year-old with melanoma being forced to undergo chemotherapy: Urban legend?

My recent update of my ongoing discussion of the Abraham Cherrix case reminded me that there’s a bit of alarming e-mail being sent out and forwarded far and wide. If you read it, at first glance, you will think it sounds utterly horrifying, the Abraham Cherrix and Katie Wernecke cases all rolled up into one […]

Categories
Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Abraham Cherrix’s lymphoma in “remission”?

It would appear that there’s finally some good news in the strange and sad case of Starchild Abraham Cherrix. The AP reports that he and his doctor are reporting that his lymphoma is in remission again: FLOYD, Va. — A 17-year-old who won a court battle against state officials who tried to force him to […]