Categories
Politics

Fourth of July thoughts

This article originally appeared on July 4, 2005. Back in May, I was in Bethesda at a meeting. Because of my interest in World War II history and because I hadn’t been to Washington since its completion, I was very interested in seeing the World War II Memorial; so one afternoon I hopped on the […]

Categories
Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

The Cancer Blog goes woo

I used to like The Cancer Blog. I really did. It was one of the first medical blogs I discovered many months ago when I first dipped my toe into the blogosphere. Indeed, less than two months after I started blogging, one of The Cancer Blog’s bloggers then, Dr. Leonardo Faoro, even invited me to […]

Categories
Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Pseudoscience fights back

The guys over at Medgaget are guys after my own heart. After commenting on a dubious-sounding device called the emWave Personal Stress Reliever, which, as its makers claim, is Scientifically Validated: Stress creates incoherence in our heart rhythms. However, when we are in a state of high heart rhythm coherence the nervous system, heart, hormonal […]

Categories
Medicine

An unexpected question in a pub

Earlier this week, I was in Washington to attend my first ever NIH study section as an actual reviewer. It was definitely an illuminating experience, and overall I left with, believe it or not, more faith in the system the NIH uses to determine how grant money is doled out. Maybe I’ll become more cynical […]

Categories
Autism Bioethics Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Anti-mercury warriors descending further into the depths

Damn you, Kathleen. Every time I think that I can give the whole mercury/autism thing a rest for a while and move on to less infuriating pastures, you keep finding things that keep dragging me back to the pit of pseudoscience inhabited by Dr. Mark Geier and his son David. The first time around, Kathleen […]