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

A founding father of quackademic medicine speaks

It’s been a while since I’ve written about Brian Berman. We first met him when he somehow managed to insinuate a “case report” of chronic low back pain into The New England Journal of Medicine in which he recommended acupuncture for this patient. Dr. Berman also happens to be a founder of quackademic medicine on […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Quackery

Quackademic medicine involving reflexology

Reflexology is quackery. It’s based on magical thinking that views every major organ in the body as somehow mappable to specific points on the soles of the feet or the palms of the hands and posits that somehow massaging these areas can have therapeutic effects on the organs in question. Claims regularly made for reflexology […]

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Announcements Complementary and alternative medicine Intelligent design/creationism Medicine Skepticism/critical thinking

Leaving on a jet plane: CSICon and quackademic medicine, plus random blather

Instead of the usual logorrheic (usually) well-thought out Insolence you’ve come to expect every day, Instead, you’ll hvae an announcement and a couple of random thoughts. The reasons are multiple. First, today’s a travel day. I’m heading off to Nashville to attend and speak at CSICon. My topic? What do you think it will be? […]

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Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Quackery

Quackademic medicine invades the military again

As much as I write about the infiltration of quackademic medicine into medical academia, there is one particular area that is being increasingly invaded by such quackery. It’s an area that you wouldn’t necessarily expect, although anyone who’s read The Men Who Stare at Goats might not be so shocked. Yes, I’m referring to the […]

Categories
Complementary and alternative medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

American Academy of Family Physicians embraces quackademic medicine

In a week and a half, Harriet Hall, Kimball Atwood, and I will be joining Eugenie C. Scott at CSICon to do a session entitled Teaching Pseudoscience in Medical (and Other) Schools. As you might imagine, we will be discussing the infiltration of pseudoscience into medical academia and medical training, a phenomenon I frequently refer […]