Categories
Biology Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Science

Basic science: An “obstacle” to students who want to study medicine?

If there’s one aspect of medical education that I consider to be paramount, at least when it comes to understanding how to analyze and apply all the evidence, both basic science and clinical, it’s a firm grounding in the scientific method. I advocate science-based medicine (SBM), which is what evidence-based medicine (EBM) should be. SBM […]

Categories
Biology Cancer Medicine Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Fructose and pancreatic cancer

I hate science press releases. Well, not exactly. I hate science press releases that hype a study beyond its importance. I hate it even more when the investigators who published the study make statements not justified by the study and use the study as a jumping off point to speculate wildly. True, it’s not always […]

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Surgery

Andrew Wakefield, exactly where he belongs…again

I haven’t really taken much note of Andrew Wakefield in a while, and in general that’s a very good thing indeed. However, I found out recently that somehow I missed this gem from around the time of Autism One: That’s right. I thought it was pretty bad that Andy Wakefield had appeared on Coast to […]

Categories
Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Quackademic medicine infiltrates the New England Journal of Medicine

One of the things that disturbs me the most about where medicine is going is the infiltration of quackery into academic medicine. So prevalent is this unfortunate phenomenon that Doctor RW even coined a truly apt term for it: Quackademic medicine. In essence, pseudoscientific and even prescientific ideas are rapidly being “integrated” with science-based medicine, […]

Categories
Complementary and alternative medicine Friday Woo Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Your Friday Dose of Woo: Living water living free

A couple of days ago, I expressed my amusement at an e-mail sent to me by someone named “Carol.” The amusement came primarily from the subject matter in the e-mail, which described something called a “biophoton ionizer,” whatever that is. Knowing, as I do, how prevalent water woo is (after all, what is homeopathy but […]