Categories
Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Skepticism/critical thinking

“All truth comes from public debate”: A corollary to crank magnetism

Advocates of pseudoscience like antivaxers love public debates. In fact, they think such debates are an excellent way to get at the truth. That’s not how science works.

Categories
Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Medicine Quackery

Claiming to be able to cure cancer with magic water

I’ve written about naturopathy many times before. The reasons that it interests me are several. First, it amazes me how anyone “discipline” (if you want to call it that) can encompass so many forms of quackery, some of which are mutually contradictory. (For instance, how can homeopathy and traditional Chinese medicine both be true?) Also, […]

Categories
Biology Cancer Medicine Science

Is there gold in that thar genomic medicine?

I’ve written a lot about a doctor named Stanislaw Burzynski who claims to have much better outcomes in treating deadly brainstem tumors than conventional oncology does. Although the way he claims to do it is through the use of substances he calls “antineoplastons,” which he claimed to have isolate from the urine of patients. Over […]

Categories
Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Naturopathy Quackery

Naturopathy, functional medicine, and other quackademic medicine at the University of Kansas Medical Center

It’s been a while since I’ve done this, but somehow now seems to be the right time, particularly after doing such a long post yesterday on the intellectually dishonest promotion of “brave maverick” cancer doctor Stanislaw Burzynski. Unfortunately, dubious clinics like the Burzynski Clinic are not the only place where I find highly questionable medicine. […]

Categories
Cancer Clinical trials Medicine

No, the New York Times did not “kill your patient.”

One of the more depressing things about getting much more interested in the debate over how we should screen for common cancers, particularly breast and prostate cancer, is my increasing realization of just how little physicians themselves understand about the complexities involved in weighing the value of such tests. It’s become increasingly apparent to me […]