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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Entertainment/culture Medicine Popular culture Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking Television

Oprah and Jenny McCarthy: A woo too far

Last week I wrote a bit about what I’ve been tempted to call Oprah’s War on Science but settled for the title of a documentary called The Oprah Effect. The reason, as I have mentioned before, is that arguably there is no single person who does more to promote pseudoscientific and dubious health practices than […]

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

Oprah and Chopra sittin’ in a tree…

I know I’ve been very hard on Oprah Winfrey the last couple of weeks, taking her to task for her promotion on her show of medicine that is at best dubious and at worst quackery, as promoted by frequent guests like Suzanne Somers, Dr. Christiane Northrup, and the queen of the anti-vaccine movement, Jenny “I’m […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Entertainment/culture Medicine Quackery Television

Has Dr. Oz finally crossed the Woobicon?

I’ve had it with Dr. Oz. Although I haven’t seen his show today (for one thing, I work for a living; for another thing, even if I had today off I wouldn’t waste it watching Dr. Oz’s show), readers have informed me that yesterday, on March 1, 2010, Dr. Oz threw away whatever shred of […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Entertainment/culture Medicine Popular culture Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking Television

Dr. Oz: America’s doctor and the abdication of professional responsibility

Believe it or not, there was once a time when Dr. Mehmet Oz didn’t bother me that much. At least, for all his flirting with woo, I never quite thought that he had completely gone over to the Dark Side. Although I probably knew deep down that I was fooling myself. Maybe it was because […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

“Integrative oncology”: Quackademic medicine victorious?

One of the main topics that I’ve covered over the last four or five of laying down a swath of not-so-Respectful Insolence directed at pseudoscience is the relatively rapid, seemingly relentless infiltration of pseudoscience into what should be bastions of science-based medicine (SBM), namely medical schools and academic medical centers promoted by academics who should, […]