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

Does thinking make it so? The placebo myth rears its ugly head again.

Blogging is a funny thing. Sometimes the coincidence involved is epic. For instance, as I do on many Mondays, yesterday I crossposted a modified and updated version of a post from a week ago from my not-so-super-secret other blog. This time around, it just so happened to be a post about what I like to […]

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Off to Skepticon…

As this goes live I’ll be heading to the airport, my purpose being to wing my way to Skepticon 7, where I’ll be speaking tomorrow on a little ditty I like to call The Central Dogma of Alternative Medicine. It’ll be fun, and I’m looking forward to it. However, in true Orac fashion, I haven’t […]

Categories
Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Quackery

A quack goes to prison, but it’s not enough

If there’s one thing that’s frustrating about the U.S. justice system, it’s just how slow the wheels of justice grind. For example, it’s hard to believe that it was over two years ago that “pH Miracle” quack Robert O. Young was arrested for fraud, grand theft, and practicing medicine without a license, producing one of […]

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

The road to alternative medicine apostasy

I’ve been blogging for over a decade now, a fact that I find really hard to believe looking back on it right now. I’ve told the story before, but it’s worth briefly recounting again because doing so will explain why the story I’m about to discuss caught my attention. My “gateway drug,” if you will, […]

Categories
Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Medicine Naturopathy Popular culture Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Aftermath: Will the “alternative health movement” learn anything from Jess Ainscough’s death?

It’s been a rather…interesting…weekend. Friday, I noted the death of Jess Ainscough, a.k.a. “The Wellness Warrior,” a young Australian woman who was unfortunate enough to develop epithelioid sarcoma, a rare cancer, at the age of 22. I’ve been blogging about her because after her doctors tried isolated limb perfusion with chemotherapy in an attempt to […]