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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine

Microsoft, Merck, and Bill Gates: Eugenicists?

Since I wrote about a man who is arguably the biggest seller of quackery on the Internet, namely Joe Mercola, yesterday, I thought I’d turn my attention to someone who is arguably another of the biggest promoters of quackery on the Internet, namely Mike Adams of NaturalNews.com. If Joe Mercola is proof positive that quackery […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Evolution Medicine Politics Quackery Religion Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Politics versus science

I’ve always been reluctant to attribute antiscientific attitudes to one political persuasion or another–and justly so, or so I thought. While it’s true that antiscience on the right is definitely more prominent these days, with the Republican candidates conducting virtual seminars on how to deny established science. Evolution? They don’t believe in it because, apparently, […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

“Opposing views”: Cancer quackery versus…HIV/AIDS denialism

Since when did Opposing Views become NaturalNews.com? Anyone who’s read this blog for a while knows that NaturalNews.com is one of the wretchedest hives of scum and quackery anywhere on the Internet, surpassing even The Huffington Post. Indeed, so full of misinformation, pseudoscience, quackery, and outright lies, all spiced up with a heapin’ helpin’ of […]

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Cancer Evolution Medicine Science

Medicine and evolution, part 13: The fly in the ointment of personalized cancer therapy

About a year ago, I addressed what might seem to the average reader to be a very simple, albeit clichéd question: If we can put a man on the moon, why can’t we cure cancer? As I pointed out at the time, it’s a question that I sometimes even ask myself, particularly given that cancer […]

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Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

“Why aren’t there more clinical trials studying the effect of CAM on cancer?” cries the CAM advocate

I’ve lamented time and time again just how much money the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) wastes on basic research and clinical trials of modalities that are, from a scientific viewpoint, so highly implausible that the chances of finding a clinically useful or relevant–or even a consistent statistically significant–effect (for example, homeopathy […]