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

Your Friday Dose of Woo: Late night ads to make you poop

It’s very bad when I have a week off. Very, very bad. The reason is that when I have a week off I have this rather unfortunate tendency to stay up late at night, and when I stay up late at night I have an even more unfortunate tendency to check out late night infomercials […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Surgery

David Kirby and the government “concession that vaccines cause autism”: The incredible shrinking causation claim

I didn’t want to blog about this. I really didn’t. No, the reason why I didn’t want to blog about this latest screed by mercury militia enabler David Kirby is not because it is about any sort of slam-dunk proof that vaccines do after all cause autism, a mistaken impression that you might get if […]

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Clinical trials Medicine

Do cell phones make men sterile?

A few days ago, I came across an article on Engadget that mentioned almost in passing some studies that seemed to indicate health problems or no health problems, depending on the specific study, due to the ubiquitous and maligned cellular telephone. Not having dealt with this issue much on my blog, I decided to take […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

If you want some cancer woo, and you want it now, who ya gonna call? Mike Adams!

In a way, I have to hand it to Mike Adams. As you may recall, Mike Adams is the man behind what is arguably one of the top two or three woo-filled sites on the Internet, NaturalNews.com (formerly known as NewsTarget.com). I’m hard-pressed to come up with an example of someone who can deliver delusional […]

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Clinical trials Medicine Politics Surgery

When human subjects protection stifles innovation, part II

Back in late December, I came across an op-ed piece in the New York Times written by Dr. Atul Gawande, general and endocrine surgeon and author of Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect Science and Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance, that struck me as a travesty of what our system for protecting human […]