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Complementary and alternative medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

In which Mike Adams gives Orac an unintended Christmas present

It’s Christmas Eve, and the blogging is light. I was going to have some fun with a truly ridiculous—is there ever any other kind?—segment on Dr. Oz’s show in which he actually combined a quack and a psychic with some EEGs to become a “100% believer” in psychic scammer “Long Island Medium” Theresa Caputo. However, […]

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Bioethics Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking Sports

When false hope leads well-meaning people astray

One of the frequent topics on this blog is, unsurprisingly, cancer quackery. Be it the Gerson therapy and its propensity for encouraging patients to take hundreds of supplements and to shoot copious amounts of coffee where it really doesn’t belong (where the sun don’t shine), the Gonzalez protocol, homeopathy, naturopathy, or various other nonsensical and […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Politics Quackery

Why are antivaccinationists so at home with Libertarianism?

Rats. Everyone’s blogging about all the studies showing (as if it needed to be shown yet again) that vitamin supplementation is not necessary for most people, nor does it decrease the risk of heart disease or cancer, and I can’t, at least not yet. Why not? Because my friggin’ university doesn’t subscribe to the Annals […]

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Cancer Medicine Popular culture

Fear mongering over cell phones and cancer by Dr. Oz

These days, Dr. Oz seems to stand for everything I oppose in medicine: Fear mongering, quackery, making claims that he can’t back up with science, and, of course, filthy lucre. On second thought, I’m not against filthy lucre per se. In fact, I wouldn’t mind having some of it myself. However, I also want to […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Quackery

A bit of antivaccine misinformation from the left and the right

Thanks, Daily Kos. Well, not really. You’ll see why in a minute, but first here’s the background. There’s a general impression out there that the political right is associated with the antiscience that includes anthropogenic global warming denialism, denial of evolution, and denial of aspects of reproductive biology that don’t jibe with their religious beliefs, […]