Categories
Biology Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Anti-fluoridation crankery? How quaintly 1960s! I only wish it weren’t on ScienceBlogs

No, no, no, no, no! I hate it when a fellow ScienceBlogger goes astray! Fortunately, it’s been a long time indeed since I felt obligated to administer a dose of Insolence, Respectful or otherwise, to a fellow ScienceBlogger. It’s been even longer (as in, I think, never) that I’ve ever seen one whose resource I […]

Categories
Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

On the magical prevention of pancreatic cancer

I don’t know how I missed this article. I really don’t. It’s over a week old, and it’s exactly the sort of irritating cancer quackery that normally draws me irresistibly to it to slather it in a heapin’ helpin’ of not-so-Respectful Insolence. After all, being a cancer surgeon and all, I really, really hate cancer […]

Categories
Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Dr. Mark Hyman: Let’s turn back the clock on science-based medicine in favor of anecdote-based medicine

I sometimes think I ought to send a thank you letter to Dr. Mark Hyman. True, I don’t owe him quite as much as I owe, for example, Mike Adams of NaturalNews.com, anyone on the blogging crew of the anti-vaccine crank propaganda blog Age of Autism, Dr. Jay Gordon, or several other pseudoscientists, quacks, or […]

Categories
Bioethics Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Quackery Science

The Guatemala syphilis experiment, human subjects research abuses, and CAM

If there’s one thing that burns me about so-called “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM) clinical trials, it’s how unethical many of them are. This is particularly true for trials that test modalities that, on the basic science grounds alone, can be dismissed as so highly implausible and with such a low prior probability of success […]

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Autism Medicine

How not to achieve respectability

Sometimes I can’t figure anti-vaccine loons out. No, I’m not talking about the pure pseudoscience they lay down on a daily basis. I can sort of get how some of them might cling against all scientific evidence to the idea that somehow vaccines “damaged” their child, along with the blandishments of the army of quacks […]