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Bioethics Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

The justification for NCCAM: “What can be done to generate a better placebo?”

It’s probably an understatement to say that I’ve been critical of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM). Indeed, I consider it not only to be a boondoggle that wastes the taxpayers’ money funding pseudoscience, but a key promoter of quackery. Worse, its promotion of highly implausible (one might even say magical) modalities […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Quackery

Senator Tom Harkin: NCCAM has “fallen short” because it hasn’t validated enough woo

Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) owes me a new irony meter. I’ll explain in a minute, but first you have to know why I even give a rodent’s posterior about Harkin. As you may recall, no single legislator in the U.S. has done more to damage the cause of science- and evidence-based medicine than Tom Harkin. […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Stupid cubed: David Kirby, RFK, Jr., and Generation Rescue use the Bailey Banks case to tag team the antivaccine counterattack against the MMR

“Just when I thought I was out… they pull me back in.” At least, that’s what Michael Corleone said in The Godfather, Part 3, and even though I’m not a mafia don, I can sort of relate to where he’s coming from, if you know what I mean. It seems that whenever I try to […]

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

It’s not just homeopathy. It’s quantum homeopathy!

Unfortunately, as we have been dreading for the last four months or so since her relapse was diagnosed, my mother-in-law passed away from breast cancer in hospice. She died peacefully, with my wife and the rest of her family at her side. As you might expect, I do not much feel like blogging, and even […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

Vitamin C and cancer: Has Linus Pauling been vindicated?

Unfortunately, as we have been dreading for the last four months or so since her relapse was diagnosed, my mother-in-law passed away from breast cancer in hospice. She died peacefully, with my wife and the rest of her family at her side. As you might expect, I do not much feel like blogging, and even […]