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Bioethics Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Entertainment/culture Medicine Movies Quackery

Burzynski The Movie: Is Stanislaw Burzynski a pioneering cancer researcher or a quack?

I’ve been thinking about the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch. You remember the Holy Hand Grenade, don’t you? It was in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, where a cleric goes on and on about how “three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt […]

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Bioethics Cancer Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

Marc Stephens issues more threats on behalf of the Burzynski Clinic

Over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, I was simultaneously alarmed and amused at how someone named Marc Stephens, who claims (although presents no evidence for his claim) that he represents the rogue physician and “researcher” Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski, had taken to threatening skeptical bloggers who criticize Dr. Burzynski’s highly dubious cancer therapy, a therapy Burzynski dubbed […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

A P.R. flack from the Burzynski Clinic threatens a skeptical blogger

A common thread that runs through the activities of various antiscience cranks, quacks, charlatans, and denialists is an extreme aversion to criticism. In fact, in many cases their aversion to criticism is so extreme that a common reaction of cranks to even legitimate criticism is to try to shut that criticism down any way possible. […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Medicine Quackery

Compare and contrast

I’ve spent nearly seven years and an enormous amount of verbiage writing about the difference between pseudoscience and science, between cranks and skeptics, between denialists and scientists. Along the way, I’ve identified a number of factors common to cranks and denialists. For example, two of the most prominent characteristics are a tendency to cherry pick […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Medicine

Picking up one’s marbles and going home

One of the greatest gifts anyone can give is to donate his body to science after death. Such anatomic gifts contribute to the training of medical students, residents, and other medical professionals as well as being used for research that can contribute to the advancement of medical science. One of the things that makes an […]