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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Taking woo in the military to a whole new level: Deploying acupuncturists to Iraq

Several months ago, I wrote a post about the experimentation with acupuncture by an Air Force physician, Col. Robert Niemtzow. In the post, I started with an admittedly exaggerated vignette–a story, if you will–of a soldier whose leg was shredded by a mortar in battle. When the medic came to treat his wounds and get […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Friday Woo Medicine Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Your Friday Dose of Woo: Soundscapes on the brain

I had thought about taking the day off after celebrating the 100th Meeting of the Skeptics’ Circle yesterday, but a skeptic’s work is never done, and, besides, my wife’s out of town for a couple of days. Given the choice of television, working on my program’s section of our cancer center core grant or one […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

There’s no woo like Harvard woo

I’d start out by saying that here’s another one for my (in)famous Academic Woo Aggregator, except that this institution is already a part of the Woo Aggregator. The only thing I can say is that Steve Novella (who’s from Yale and has had to manage an influx of woo at his home institution) might get […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Why woo is thriving in academic medical centers

I’ve lamented the infiltration of woo into academic medicine. I’ve even gone so far as to try to keep a list of all the academic medical centers in North America that have “integrative medicine” programs that credulously teach and promote non-evidence-based medicine as though it were evidence-based with my Academic Woo Aggregator. I’ve speculated that […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Quackery

NCCAM: Your tax dollars hard at work funding woo

I used to be somewhat of a supporter of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM). I really did. This was back when I was more naïve and idealistic. Indeed, when I first read Wally Sampson’s article Why NCCAM should be defunded, I thought it a bit too strident and even rather close-minded. […]