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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Religion

Religion versus alternative medicine

Many have been the times that I’ve pointed out that many forms of “alternative” medicine are in reality based far more on mystical, religious, or “spiritual” beliefs than on any science. Indeed, one amusing event that provided me the opening to launch into one of my characteristic (and fun) Orac-ian outbursts occurred a couple of […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Clinical trials Medicine

Better late than never: The Dunning-Kruger effect meets an incompetent anti-vaccine “analysis”

It never ceases to amaze me just how ignorant of very basic principles of science anti-vaccine activists often are. I mean, seriously. Every time they try to post something, whether they know it or not, they end up making themselves look so very, very stupid–or at least ignorant. The Dunning-Kruger effect takes over, and people […]

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Religion

Sugarland: Saved by prayer?

One thing that’s bothered me about religion even before I became the lapsed Catholic heathen that I am, is how God always gets the credit for good things but never the bad. A perfect example is related to the collapse of the stage in a storm at the Indiana State Fair that killed five people […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

“Integrative medicine” further evolves into “evidence-based complementary medicine.” Nothing changes

One of these days I’m going to end up getting myself in trouble. The reason, as I’ve only half-joked before, is that, even though I’m not even 50 yet, I’m already feeling like a dinosaur when it comes to “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM) or, as it’s called more frequently now, “integrative medicine” (IM). These […]

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Cancer Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

“Natural” versus CAM “natural”

NOTE: I was on a lovely vacation for three days in Chicago over the weekend, where I visited old haunts. (Bathroom attendants? At one of my favorite pub hangouts when I lived in Lincoln Park, John Barleycorn? Handing out crappy brown paper towels? Plastering the walls there with endless rows of flat screen TVs turned […]