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Cancer Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine History Medicine Movies Popular culture Science Skepticism/critical thinking

How Stanislaw Burzynski became Burzynski the Brave Maverick Doctor, part 1

Time really does fly. It’s hard to believe that it’s been over a week since I gave my big (to me, at least) talk at TAM. It’s equally hard to believe that it’s been more than a week since I had the honor of being kicked out of Penn Jillette’s Private Rock & Roll Bacon […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Quackery

How to be simultaneously right yet oh-so-wrong about homeopathy

I’ve often (perhaps too often) referred to homeopathy as The One Quackery To Rule Them All. If not homeopathy, what other quackery would rule? Homeopathy is, after all, the perfect quackery. Most of its most “potent” remedies are nothing more than water, because homeopaths believe that the more a solution is serially diluted (with succussion, […]

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Cancer Clinical trials Medicine

In which Orac does Stanislaw Burzynski propagandist Eric Merola a favor…

Believe it or not, I’m going to do Eric Merola (who doesn’t particularly like me, to the point of thinking, apparently, that I’m a white supremacist who doesn’t like evidence but does like to eat puppies) a favor. Having been away at TAM, somehow I missed this. Well, actually, I didn’t miss it, but somehow […]

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Cancer Clinical trials Medicine Science

Clinical trials do still work, but need to evolve

As I write this, I’m winging my way home from TAM, crammed uncomfortably—very uncomfortably—in a window seat in steerage—I mean, coach). I had thought of simply recounting the adventures of the contingent of skeptics with whom I’m associated who did make it out to TAM to give talks at workshops and the main stage and […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Jenny McCarthy, antivaccine lunacy, and “The View”

Like Steve, I’m off to The Amazing Meeting today. I don’t know how much I’ll be posting, but, as Han Solo so famously said, “Hey, it’s me.” I’m sure I won’t be able to resist. In any case, I’ll be taking part in the Science-Based Medicine workshop tomorrow, and, for the first time ever, I’ll […]