Categories
Bioethics Cancer Clinical trials Medicine Politics

Dichloroacetate and The DCA Site: A low bar for “success” (part 2)

Be careful what you ask for; you just might get it. I say this in light of a commenter, who decided to show up in one of my old posts to claim “positive results” from dichloroacetate (DCA), the small molecule experimental cancer drug that has shown promising activity in rat models of cancer but has […]

Categories
Entertainment/culture Science fiction/fantasy Television

The fourth and final season of Battlestar Galactica?

From a variety of sources, I’ve learned that the fourth season of Battlestar Galactica is probably going to be the last and that the beleaguered humans will find Earth. Here it is, right from Admiral Adama himself: iF MAGAZINE: What’s coming up for season four? EDWARD JAMES OLMOS: It’s fantastic. I think they’re going to […]

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

If randomized clinical trials don’t show that your woo works, try anthropology!

A common refrain among practitioners and advocates of alternative medicine is that the reason randomized clinical trials frequently fail to find any objective evidence of clinical efficacy for their favorite woo is because, in essence, science is not the right tool to evaluate whether it works. In essence, they either appeal to other ways of […]

Categories
History Holocaust Skepticism/critical thinking World War II

Skepticism undermined by an insufficient knowledge of history

I’ll admit it. There have been at least two times since I started blogging that I fell for a dubious story because I exercised insufficient skepticism. The first time occurred very early on in my blogging history when swallowed a story about how legalization of prostitution was claimed to lead to the requirement that unemployed […]

Categories
Cancer Clinical trials Medicine Politics Science

Bloviations and pontifications on the state of cancer research, part 2 (of 2)

In rapid succession after the last pontificating and bloviating article claiming that there will never be a cure for cancer because it would be too financially disastrous to the medical economy, I’ve been made aware of another pontificating and bloviating article decrying the state of cancer research today, entitled Curing Cancer: Running on Vapor, Remedy: […]