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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Popular culture Skepticism/critical thinking

SB 277 clears another major legislative hurdle

I bet antivaccinationists would be annoyed if they knew what I was up to yesterday. This week, our department had a visiting professor for Grand Rounds, and that professor was a Nobel laureate. Of course, it’s not every day that we have a Nobel laureate visiting us (actually, it’s rare). This time around the Nobel […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Naturopathy Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

The exaggeration that is “food as medicine”

Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food. – attributed to Hippocrates Who said anything about medicine? Let’s eat! – attributed to one of Hippocrates forgotten (and skeptical) students   Who hasn’t seen or heard Hippocrates’ famous quote about letting food be your medicine and your medicine your food? If you have Facebook […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Religion Science Skepticism/critical thinking

In which pro-vaccine advocates are inappropriately portrayed as frenzied, self-righteous “zealots”

One of the odd things about having been a blogger as long as I have been is that, occasionally, posts that I wrote years ago rise up to bite me long after I’ve forgotten that I even wrote them. Actually, that’s usually not the right way to put it. Blogging is a very short term […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Another favorite pseudoscience trope: “I’m just providing information”

After having written yesterday’s piece about the fallacy known as the appeal to nature, a favorite fallacy of the alternative medicine crowd. The idea that if something is somehow “natural” it must be superior to anything viewed as “unnatural” or “man-made” is deeply ingrained in pseudoscientific medicine. Heck, there’s even a brand of quackery known […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Medicine Naturopathy Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking Television

Regulating the magic that is homeopathy: The sabotage of poor reporting and false balance

Well, it’s over. I’m referring to the two day hearing held by the FDA in Bethesda seeking public comment regarding how it should modernize its regulation of homeopathic products. Actually, as I discussed before (as did Jann Bellamy over at my favorite other blog, Science-Based Medicine), in fact it’s arguable wither there is currently much, […]