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

JAMA: A willing accomplice to co-opting “nonpharmacologic” treatments for pain as being “alternative” or “complementary”

That I’m not a fan of the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH, formerly known as the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, or NCCAM) should come as no surprise to anyone. Basically, from its very inception as the Office of Alternative Medicine in the early 1990s to its growth to large […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Why do medical conference organizers keep inviting Deepak Chopra to speak?

Way, way back in the day, before I took an interest in pseudoscientific medical claims, I knew who Deepak Chopra was. Back then, though, like most doctors, I didn’t pay much attention to him and didn’t know much about him other than that he was some sort of alternative medicine guru, a physician who had […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Quackery

Nobody promotes antivaccine nonsense in my state…without receiving some Insolence (2016 election edition)

Remember the scene in The Blues Brothers where Jake and Elwood are sitting in the Bluesmobile and come across a Nazi rally taking place on a bridge? Jake says with utter disgust, “I hate Illinois Nazis,” before driving over the bridge, forcing the Nazis to flee and jump into the river below. That’s basically the […]

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

Licensing naturopathic quackery in Mississippi: If at first you don’t succeed…

Here we go again. Naturopaths crave legitimacy for their brand of pseudoscientific medicine. Basically, they delude themselves into thinking that they are real doctors and can function as primary care providers, despite abundant evidence that they cannot. they One (of several) ways they seek to acquire that legitimacy for naturopathy and themselves is through promoting […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Popular culture Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

In which I am compared to Donald Trump by a pro-quackademic medicine activist

A little over a month ago, I wrote about how proponents of “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM), now more frequently called “integrative medicine,” go to great lengths to claim nonpharmacological treatments for, well, just about anything as somehow being CAM or “integrative.” The example I used was a systematic review article published by several of […]