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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Taking woo in the military to a whole new level: Deploying acupuncturists to Iraq

Several months ago, I wrote a post about the experimentation with acupuncture by an Air Force physician, Col. Robert Niemtzow. In the post, I started with an admittedly exaggerated vignette–a story, if you will–of a soldier whose leg was shredded by a mortar in battle. When the medic came to treat his wounds and get […]

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Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

“Complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM) goes for the bandwagon fallacy again

It figures. Right around the time of my blogiversary yesterday, when I had intended nothing more than a brief by characteristically self-indulgent bit of navel-gazing twaddle (at which, I succeeded brilliantly, I might add; no one–and I mean no one–does self-indulgent navel-gazing twaddle better than I do), what should be there tempting me from my […]

Categories
Evolution Intelligent design/creationism Medicine Science Skepticism/critical thinking Surgery

Facepalm, thy name is Dr. Egnor! Or: I find your excess of faith in the scientific abilities of physicians…disturbing

I have to wonder if the most famous denizen of the Discovery Institute in medical circles, Dr. Michael Egnor, is on vacation or something. For some reason, he’s been especially active over at the Discovery Institute’s repository of pseudoscience, Evolution News & Views, over the last couple of weeks. Neurosurgeons tend to be very busy […]

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Bioethics Cancer Clinical trials Medicine

Patient-led “clinical trials” versus clinical research

In 2007, I wrote a series of posts about what I found to be a fascinating yet at the same time disturbing phenomenon, specifically self-experimentation by cancer patients using an as yet unapproved drug called dichloroacetate. If you’ll recall, DCA is a small molecule drug that was used to treat congenital lactic acidosis in children […]

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Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

Yet another acupuncture meta-analysis: Garbage in, garbage out

Ever since I started paying attention to it, acupuncture has, at least until recently, inspired ambivalence more than anything else in me. As a skeptic and science-based physician, I found it very easy to dismiss utter quackery like homeopathy or the various “energy healing” modalities, such as reiki or therapeutic touch strictly on the science […]