Categories
Cancer Medicine

Does a positive attitude prolong cancer survival?

I’ve always wondered, as I’m sure many of my readers have, whether human beings have it in them to delay their own death, even briefly. Very early in the history of this blog, a mere 11 days after I started it, I discussed a study that strongly suggested that we cannot. In brief, it looked […]

Categories
Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Homeopathy debate at the University of Connecticut: Is it ever wise for scientists to debate pseudoscientists?

Regular readers know that I’ve long been disturbed by the increasing infiltration of non-evidence-based “alternative” medical therapies into academic medical centers (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8). I’ve come across another example of how much this has occurred. This time around, it’s come in the form of a “debate” being held at 2 […]

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Anti-Semitism History Holocaust Holocaust denial World War II

And the jackals continue to turn on David Irving

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned how Holocaust denier extraordinaire David Irving had gotten into some trouble with his former fellow travelers in the world of Holocaust denial. Apparently they didn’t like the fact that he now concedes that the mass slaughter of Jews “may have” occurred. Of course he still denies that Auschwitz […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

The “Jenny McCarthy effect”: More credulity towards autism quackery

I was thinking of calling this post Jenny McCarthy and Julie Deardorff: Two crappy tastes that taste crappy together, but I’ve already used that joke with Jenny McCarthy and Oprah Winfrey. Besides, Julie Deardorff isn’t nearly as famous as Oprah, although, as I’ve discussed before, she’s probably even more credulous than Oprah towards the lastest […]

Categories
Evolution Intelligent design/creationism Pseudoscience Skepticism/critical thinking

Jeffrey Dahmer: “Darwin made me do it.”

I must lead a sheltered life, at least when it comes to the creationism-evolution wars. Sure, I’m more than aware about how much creationists and their more common (these days, at least) bastard offspring “intelligent design” creationists like to cherry pick, twist, and mangle data to make it seem to support their case, or, when […]