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Complementary and alternative medicine Friday Woo Medicine Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Your Friday Dose of Woo: The Emperor of the Woo-niverse

Due to my activities at the Society of Surgical Oncology meeting in San Antonio, somehow I didn’t manage to crank out a bit of that Insolence, Respectful or Not-So-Respectful, that you all crave. So, given that this is Friday, I thought I’d to a “rerun” of a bit of classic woo. This one’s a little […]

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Medicine Politics Quackery Religion

Oregon: On the verge of stripping legal protection based on religion from parents who choose prayer instead of medicine

Over the years, I’ve said it many times. Competent adults have the right (or should have the right) to choose or refuse any medical treatment they wish for any reason. It doesn’t matter how ridiculous the reason might be. If a competent adult believes that magic water (i.e., homeopathy) can cure him of cancer, we […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Medicine

“We shall overcome,” sings the anti-vaccine movement

Yesterday, in the course of applying a heapin’ helpin’ of not-so-Respectful Insolence to a particularly brain dead exercise by the anti-vaccine movement, in which the International Medical Council on Vaccination (the most deceptively named anti-vaccine organization this side of the National Vaccine Information Center) gathered 80 signatures of “health care professionals” who warn about the […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Skepticism/critical thinking

I prefer my food dead, thank you very much

Most of the woo I write about, fortunately, I don’t have to deal with directly close to home. This is a good thing indeed, because it means that where I practice is blissfully free (for the most part) of pseudoscience. Unfortunately, earlier this year, I was in for an unpleasant surprise when I found out […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Mothering: A bastion of woo targeted at young mothers

Over the last three weeks, the British Medical Journal (BMJ) has been publishing a multipart expose by investigative journalist Brian Deer that enumerated in detail the specifics of how a British gastroenterologist turned hero of the anti-vaccine movement had committed scientific fraud by falsifying key aspects of case reports that he used as the basis […]