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Biology Evolution Humor Paranormal Physics Pseudoscience Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Tying up loose ends from 2009: Deepak Chopra versus Michael Shermer

Over the holidays, I stayed at home for a combination of some relaxation and some grant writing. (I know, weird.) As I was perusing some of the links I saved during that time, it occurs to me that I totally forgot about one particularly amazing bit of hilarity, courtesy of our old “friend” Deepak Chopra. […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Mercola sells the delusion of homeopathy

It’s a really tough competition, but if I had to choose the most ridiculous form of quackery out there, I’d have to choose homeopathy. Although it’s common for so-called “alternative” medicines to be so utterly implausible from a scientific standpoint that it is not unreasonable, barring very compelling positive evidence, to provisionally reject them as […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

When testimonials are used in medical advertising

(NOTE ADDED 12/7/2010: Kim Tinkham has died of what was almost certainly metastatic breast cancer.) If there’s been one theme running through this blog every since the very beginning, it’s the unreliability of testimonials as “evidence” for the success of a cancer treatment. Indeed, if you go back to one of the very first “Orac-length” […]

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Cancer Clinical trials Medicine Politics

The USPSTF mammography guidelines and African American women: Do they even apply?

A while back I wrote about really rethinking how we screen for breast cancer using mammography. Basically, the USPSTF, an independent panel of physicians and health experts that makes nonbinding recommendations for the government on various health issues, reevaluated the evidence for routine screening mammography and concluded that for women at normal risk for breast […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine

Is Airborne supporting Generation Rescue in a bid for a “vaccinated versus unvaccinated” pseudostudy?

Well, well, well, well. What is this I found forwarded to me in my in box? It’s from the anti-vaccine group Generation Rescue, and it is most interesting: Generation Rescue is in the final stages of receiving grant funding for a vaccine research study on the long term effects of the current U.S. recommended schedule. […]