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Bioethics Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

The justification for NCCAM: “What can be done to generate a better placebo?”

It’s probably an understatement to say that I’ve been critical of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM). Indeed, I consider it not only to be a boondoggle that wastes the taxpayers’ money funding pseudoscience, but a key promoter of quackery. Worse, its promotion of highly implausible (one might even say magical) modalities […]

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Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Can we finally just say that acupuncture is nothing more than an elaborate placebo? Can we?

I think my title says it all: Can we finally just say that acupuncture is nothing more than an elaborate placebo? Can we? The reason I ask this question is because yet another large meta-analysis has been released that is entirely consistent with the hypothesis that acupuncture is a placebo. Because I’ve written about so […]

Categories
Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

That’ll teach ’em for using an actual valid placebo control

I almost feel sorry for acupuncturists these days. Almost. Well, not exactly. Clearly, given the infiltration of woo into academic medicine, acupuncturists are in demand even in the most allegedly “science-based” of academic medical centers. After all, acupuncture is what I like to refer to as “gateway woo,” an unscientific placebo-based therapy that has somehow […]

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Bioethics Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

Using placebos outside of clinical trials

The other day, I thought it was about time that I did some of that cool and fancy ResearchBlogging.org stuff, you know, to keep this blog from being nothing more than a collection of not-so-Respectfully Insolent spleen venting at generalized stupidity. I realize that those are some of the funnest posts here and that people […]

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Bioethics Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Surgery

Some placebos are more equal than others

Perusing the news early this morning, I noticed an article on ABC News about placebos. One thing I found interesting about it was that it was a story about a research letter to JAMA, not a full study. Heck, there isn’t even an abstract. Even so, the study was rather interesting and described thusly: The […]