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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

The “triumph” of New Age medicine? The Atlantic strikes again

Note added 6/16/2011: The author of the target–I mean subject–of this piece of insolence has responded in the comments. Note added 6/17/2011: Steve Novella has also commented. He is unusually harsh (for him). What is it with The Atlantic lately? It used to be one of my favorite magazines. In fact, I was a subscriber […]

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Entertainment/culture Evolution Medicine Popular culture Quackery Science

Choprawoo returns, this time with help from Bruce Lipton

Remember Deepak Chopra? He’s the physician (yes, physician) whose grasp on real science is so tenuous and whose ability to abuse multiple scientific disciplines, ranging from quantum physics to astronomy to genetics to medicine, simultaneously in the service of woo is so amazing that a few years ago I once coined a term representing the […]

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Clinical trials Medicine Pseudoscience Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Damn those microfascists demanding evidence-based medicine!

Orac note: Grant season is in full swing, and that’s what I spent my weekend doing: writing grants. Consequently, here’s a rerun from, hard as it is to believe, four and a half years ago. It’s the first appearance of one of the most hilarious “alt-med” attacks on science-based medicine I’ve ever seen, calling us […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

More bad science in the service of the discredited idea that vaccines cause autism

More than a week has passed, and I thought that this cup had passed from me, and I was glad. After all, if I analyzed every crap study done by anti-vaccine zealots to try to demonstrate that vaccines cause autism, I would have time for little else in terms of other kinds of that Insolence […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Another reason why NCCAM can never be truly scientific

I’ve frequently been critical fo the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) for funding dubious studies of pseudoscience and, in essence, promoting unscientific quackademic medicine (is there any other kind?) by giving it the patina of seeming respectability. I can’t recall how many times I’ve seen promoters of woo justify their woo by […]