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Biology Medicine Science

The Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine

No IgNobels here, the 2007 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to Mario R. Capecchi, Martin J. Evans, and Oliver Smithies for a technique that is so incredibly important to modern biomedical research that it’s a wonder they didn’t get the prize before: This year’s Nobel Laureates have made a series of […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Surgery

Woo infiltrates one of the premiere trauma hospitals in the U.S.

Regular readers know that I’ve long been dismayed at the increasing infiltration of non-evidence-based “alternative” medical therapies into academic medical centers (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7). It’s gotten such a foothold that it’s even showing up in the mandatory medical curriculum in at least one medical school. I’ve speculated before that academic medical […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Farrah Fawcett turns to alternative medicine for anal cancer

I’ve had this story sent to me by a few readers over the weekend, and I think it’s worth a brief comment. I’m basically a child of the 1970s. Although I didn’t watch it much, if ever, I remember Charlie’s Angels when I was in junior high and high school. Like any adolescent who came […]

Categories
Anti-Semitism History Politics Religion

Richard Dawkins walked right into that one, I’m afraid

Richard Dawkins really should know better. That’s why it’s frustrating to see him put his foot in his mouth in a big way in a recent interview. Indeed, he did it in a way that leaves himself wide open to charges of anti-Semitism: In an interview with the Guardian, he said: “When you think about […]

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Humor Medicine Science

The IgNobels winners have been announced

Ah, yes, it’s that time of year again. The winners of the 2007 IgNobel Prize have been announced. There have been several “worthy” winners, for example: Mayu Yamamoto from Japan won the Ig Nobel prize in chemistry for her development of a novel way to extract vanillin, the main component in vanilla bean extract, from […]