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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

The Academic Woo Aggregator

Note: The Aggregator was updated on May 18, 2008. Last week, almost on a whim, I decided to try to figure out just how much woo has infiltrated academic medicine by trying to come up with an estimate of just how many academic medical centers offer woo of some form or another in the form […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

I fought the woo, and the woo won? Or: Gotta have more woo in my medical school, revisited

Over the last couple of days, I’ve discussed “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM) in terms of a meme upon which evolutionary forces are acting to select certain forms of woo over others in academia. Although, in my usual inimitable fashion, I probably carried the concept one step too far, in the end I concluded that […]

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Medicine Science Surgery

The precarious position of physician-scientists in academic medicine today

Jake over at Pure Pedantry pointed the way to an article in Science that I hadn’t seen yet because of my absence. Just like yesterday’s topic, this one too is right up my alley. Specifically, it’s about something near and dear to my heart, namely the trials and tribulations of being a physician-scientist. The article […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

“Alternative medical income” (a.k.a. “woo pays the bills”)

I’ve written a lot about alternative medicine, much of which I consider to be woo; i.e., treatments for which there is no medical efficacy and the belief in which often requires magical thinking. I’ve expressed my disappointment in medical physicians who fall prey to and become purveyors or woo, doctors such as Dr. Deepak Chopra, […]

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Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

One year later: Kirby tries to cover his posterior

Note: One year ago today, an autistic boy, Abubakar Tariq Nadama, died of a cardiac arrest while undergoing chelation therapy to try to “cure” his autism. Today, because I am on vacation, I have scheduled several of my old posts on the topic to appear.The investigation into his death is ongoing regarding whether to file […]