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Anti-Semitism History Holocaust Holocaust denial Politics

Is the Holocaust “revisionism” movement no more?

This blog is primarily about medicine, the scientific basis of medicine, and general skepticism and critical thinking. As part of my interest in skepticism, a particular form of pseudoscience and pseudohistory that I first took an interest in about a decade ago, namely Holocaust “revisionism,” which is, of course, in reality Holocaust denial. Holocaust denial […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Quackery

HIV/AIDS denialism, the Ministry of Truth, and the failure of memory holes in the Internet Age

One of my favorite novels of all time is George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. When it came to imagining the end to which totalitarianism could take us, no one before or since has written a more compelling book about living under such a regime. One aspect of Oceania, the fictional totalitarian state ruled […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Politics

Dr. Sanjay Gupta for Surgeon General? Yawn.

As I was sitting in the O.R. lounge yesterday afternoon between cases, the television in the lounge was tuned to CNN. One thing I noted was some rather fawning coverage of President Bush regarding the military that seemed as though it belonged on FOX News rather than CNN. Not long after that, Wolf Blitzer breathlessly […]

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Blogging Medicine

This is really starting to go to my head…

Unbelievably, it looks as though I’ve been nominated yet again for another blogging award. Really, folks, this is too much. How on earth am I going to live up to this level of accolades in 2009? Not that that would stop me from pointing out that I’m in the running for the Best Health Policies/Ethics […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

How not to do a study on the efficacy of “alternative” medicine

If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the last four years of examining the various forms of woo out there, it’s to be very, very skeptical whenever an advocate of a highly dubious-sounding “therapy” points to a study as “proof” that the therapy, whatever it is, works. Usually, what I find is a small pilot […]