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Evolution Intelligent design/creationism Medicine Pseudoscience Science Skepticism/critical thinking Surgery

More confusion on the “intelligent design” front

I’m confused again about what appear to be mutually conflicting statements. The Discovery Institute’s favorite creationist neurosurgeon Dr. Michael Egnor two months ago on Pharyngula: Perhaps a fable (not a just-so story!) will illustrate. Imagine that you, P.Z., were a student in 1925. You would study Darwinism fairly intensively as a high school student, undergrad, […]

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Intelligent design/creationism Medicine Skepticism/critical thinking Surgery

Irony meter about to explode. Must. Escape.

I don’t want to make this blog “all Egnor all the time.” I know it’s hard to believe, given my posting behavior recently, but really I don’t. No matter how much the Discovery Institute’s creationist neurosurgeon may embarrass the hell out of me as (I shudder to have to admit) a fellow surgeon, I’ve recently […]

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Evolution Medicine

Medicine and Evolution, Part 9: What was that about evolution having “nothing to do” with antimicrobial resistance?

In my last couple of posts on the risks and benefits of ever more sensitive screening tests for various cancers, and in particular breast cancer, I marveled at a a bit of serendipity that had pointed me to a particular old article a mere few days before multiple new papers about breast cancer screening with […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Evolution Friday Woo Intelligent design/creationism Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Your Friday Dose of Woo: Feedback loops, reproductive cells, cancer, and design

It is with some trepidation that I approach the latest target of Your Friday Dose of Woo. No, it’s not because the woo is so potent that it has actually struck the fear of You-Know-Who in me (I leave it up to readers to determine whether I was referring to God or Valdemort), although it […]

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Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Evolution Medicine Science Skepticism/critical thinking

The “individualization” of medical treatments, revisited with evolution

The longer I maintain this blog, the more I find unexpected (to me, at least) intersections and relationships between various topics that I write about. Of course, a lot of it simply has to do with the fact that one of the overarching themes of this blog is skepticism and critical thinking, which leads one […]