Categories
Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Skepticism/critical thinking

Yawn…another overhyped acupuncture study

Never let it be said that Orac doesn’t give the people what they want. Well, most of the time, anyway. What I’m referring to is a recent German study about acupuncture for low back pain that’s been making its way around the media. I had actually been planning on commenting about it yesterday, but Iranian […]

Categories
Anti-Semitism History Holocaust World War II

Frolicking in the shadow of hell

While I happen to have found myself back on the subject of the Holocaust and Holocaust denial again today, I thought I’d mention this, something I’ve been meaning to blog about since I found out about it last week. Beginning this week, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum will start featuring a display that, to me […]

Categories
Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Science Skepticism/critical thinking

The cranks pile on John Ioannidis’ work on the reliability of science

Pity poor John Ioannidis. The man does provocative work about the reliability of scientific studies as published in the peer-reviewed literature, and his reward for trying to point out shortcomings in how we as scientists and clinical researchers do studies and evaluate evidence is to be turned into an icon for cranks and advocates of […]

Categories
Cancer Entertainment/culture Humor Medicine Music

World’s worst album cover?

Believe it or not, this post is related, albeit somewhat tangentially, to my area of expertise, breast cancer. It’s also related to one of my great loves in life, namely loud, obnoxious rock and roll. Unfortunately, it involves bad art and an album cover so puzzling that, even when considering the source, I have a […]

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Entertainment/culture Medicine Popular culture Television

Jenny McCarthy and Oprah Winfrey: Two crappy tastes that taste crappy together on autism

I have to tip my hat to Kevin Leitch. I really do. He’s done something that I couldn’t manage to force myself to do, at least not completely. He’s