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Biology Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Pseudoscience Skepticism/critical thinking

Germ theory denialism and the magical mystical microbiome

Whenever I point out that a very common thread of “thought”—if you can call it “thought”—in alternative medicine is nothing more than germ theory denialism, the usual reaction is incredulity. Newbies who haven’t encountered quacks before invariably do a double take when I inform them that germ theory denialism is a thing, particularly among antivaccine […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

An advertisement for Stanislaw Burzynski masquerading as a news story

Although I don’t write about him as much as I used to, there was a time a couple of years ago when Houston cancer quack Stanislaw Burzynski was a frequent topic of this blog. His story, detailed in many posts on this blog and in an article I wrote for Skeptical Inquirer, is one that […]

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

Starbutts, or: How is it still a thing that people are shooting coffee up their nether regions?

Many are the “alternative” medicine therapies that I’ve examined with a skeptical eye over the years. The vast majority of them rest on concepts that range from pre-scientific to religious to outright pseudoscientific to—let’s face it—the utterly ridiculous. Examples abound: Reflexology, reiki, tongue diagnosis, homeopathy, ear candling, cupping, crystal healing, urine drinking, detoxifying foot pads, […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

No, it is not okay to give patients a treatment with no proved medical benefits

Et tu, Scientific American? A few of you seem to know what will catch my attention and push my buttons, because over the past couple of days a few of you sent me an article published in Scientific America by an internal medicine resident named Allison Bond entitled Sometimes It’s Okay to Give Patients a […]

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

A manual of spectacularly bad antivaccine arguments

To say that the relationship that antivaccine activists have with science and fact is a tenuous, twisted one is a major understatement. Despite mountains of science that says otherwise, antivaccinationists still cling to the three core tenets of their faith, namely that (1) vaccines are ineffective (or at least nowhere near as effective as health […]