Categories
Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Quackery Science

Straw men everywhere about evidence-based medicine

NOTE: Orac is on vacation recharging his Tarial cells and interacting with ion channel scientists, as a good computer should. In the meantime, he is rerunning oldies but goodies, classics, even. (OK, let’s not get carried away.) Here’s one from all the way back in 2007. Notice how, the more things change, the more they […]

Categories
Cancer Clinical trials Science

How should we treat stage 0 breast cancer?

I’ve written more times than I can remember about the phenomenon of overdiagnosis and the phenomenon that is linked at the hip with it, overtreatment. Overdiagnosis is a problem that arises when large populations of asymptomatic, apparently healthy people are screened for a disease or a condition, the idea being that catching the disease at […]

Categories
Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Medicine Quackery Science Skepticism/critical thinking

On alternative medicine, “labels,” and evidence

Alright, alright already! I get the message. Over the course of the day yesterday I was bombarded by e-mails with a link to a New York Times article that shows a rather shocking lack of understanding of the science—more specifically, the lack of science—behind alternative medicine. Whenever something like this happens and I get so […]

Categories
Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Popular culture Quackery

Another unnecessary death in the making, thanks to cancer quackery

I hate stories like this, but what I hate even more is the way stories like this are all too commonly reported. Readers have been sending me links to stories about a woman named Alex Wynn that have been published over the last few days, in particular this story about her in the Daily Mail […]

Categories
Cancer Medicine Politics Popular culture

The problem with mandatory breast density reporting laws

Over the years, I’ve written a lot about the intersection between the law and science in medicine. Sometimes, I support a particular bill, such as SB 277. Sometimes I oppose a bill, such as right-to-try or laws licensing naturopaths. The case I will discuss here is unusual in that it is a case of the […]