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Bioethics Cancer Clinical trials Medicine Science

Balancing scientific rigor versus patient good in clinical trials

A critical aspect of both evidence-based medicine (EBM) and science-based medicine (SBM) is the randomized clinical trial. Ideally, particularly for conditions with a large subjective component in symptomatology, the trial should be randomized, double-blind, and placebo-controlled. As Kimball Atwood pointed out just last week (me too), in EBM, scientific prior probability tends to be discounted […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

The UT-M.D. Anderson Cancer Center embraces quackademic medicine

I’m a cancer surgeon. I started out as a general surgeon, but my passion and scientific interest goaded me into specializing in cancer. Ultimately, I ended up subspecializing even more, ultimately becoming a breast cancer surgeon, but through it all cancer, not just breast cancer, has remained my clinical and scientific passion. So has science-based […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

The big pharma conspiracy once again crushes the idea that mercury in vaccines causes autism

THE PAST IS PROLOGUE Location: Central New Jersey, deep within the brick and steel of a secret pharma base. Year: 1999. A shadowy figure dressed in gray, bald, and stroking a white cat enters a nondescript room in the middle of which sits a massive conference table. More than a dozen men and women leap […]

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Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

More acupuncture quackademic medicine infiltrates PLoS ONE

I hate to do this to Bora again. I really do. I’m also getting tired of blogging all these crappy acupuncture studies. I really am. However, sometimes a skeptic’s gotta do what a skeptic’s gotta do, and this is one of those times. As you may recall, a mere week ago I was disturbed to […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Woo: The future of American medicine?

After chilling out for part of the weekend, yesterday I became so engrossed in writing my part of a training grant for my postdoc that, before I knew it, it was way too late to provide you with the Insolence you crave for today. Oh, well. Tomorrow for sure; there’s a lot that has been […]