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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. […]

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Bioethics Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Skepticism/critical thinking

Quackademic medicine in the U.S.: The view from the U.K.

David Colquhoun, eminent scientist and maintainer of the excellent blog DC’s Improbable Science, has recently returned home to the U.K. after a trip across the pond to the U.S. and Canada, where, among other things, he gave a lecture at the University of Toronto, as well as the Riker Memorial Lecture at the Oregon Health […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Selling homeopathy to pediatricians

I’ve never been able to figure out how anyone who claims to be devoted to science and scientific medicine can take homeopathy the least bit seriously. None of it makes any sense scientifically. Its basic principal of the “Law of Similars” has far more basis in the concepts of sympathetic magic than anything that science […]

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Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

Finally, NCCAM actually funds some worthwhile research!

I thought I might start developing chest pain when I read it, but to my shock NCCAM has actually funded some worthwhile research! Even more amazingly, NCCAM described it in a press release! Too bad it supports the contention that acupuncture is nothing more than placebo and that the attention given by the practitioner is […]

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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 […]