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Clinical trials Medicine Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Scientific fraud and journal article retractions

A week ago, I took someone who has normally been a hero of mine, Brian Deer, to task for what I considered to be a seriously cheap shot at scientists based on no hard data, at least no hard data that he bothered to present. To make a long, Orac-ian magnum opus short, Deer advocated […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

The infiltration of quackademic medicine metastasizes to the community

The infiltration of quackademic medicine continues apace, except that it’s not just quackademic medicine. Now, it goes way, way beyond that to encompass not just academic medical centers but community hospitals, hospitals of all sizes, large private hospitals, and health care institutions of all shapes and sizes. Frequently, proponents of quackademic medicine try to portray […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

R.I.P. Bernadine Healy

It came as a shock to me to find out yesterday that former director of the American Red Cross and former director of the NIH Bernadine Healy died. Chalk it up to my simply being ignorant of the fact, but I didn’t know, or had forgotten, that she had brain cancer. Interestingly, she had had […]

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

When anti-vaccine loons make videos…

…the results aren’t pretty. If there’s one thing about anti-vaccine loons that I’ve come to learn over the last decade or so, it’s that when they think they’re being clever, they’re really not. Exhibit A for this case follows: Yes, courtesy of a particularly brain dead anti-vaccine website (and, compared to Age of Autism, that’s […]

Categories
Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Regularity über alles, revisited

File this under “Well, duh!” In thinking about “alternative” medicine, occasionally I contemplate the deepest, most profound questions having to do with health and healing, the difference between science-based medicine and evidence-based medicine, and how to maximize the therapeutic effect of scientifically validated treatments. Other times, I contemplate the question of just what is, based […]