Categories
Announcements Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Medicine Naturopathy Quackery

Orac wants you to join the Society for Science-Based Medicine

Because of my involvement in this organization, I am hijacking my own blog for one day for my own nefarious purposes. To that end, I am republishing an announcement that originally appeared yesterday at a blog that a significant fraction of you are familiar with, but nowhere near all of you. And I want all […]

Categories
Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Quackery

A fungus among us in oncology? (2014 edition)

One of the more bizarre bits of cancer quackery that I’ve come across is that of an Italian doctor (who, like many cancer quacks, appears not to be a board-certified oncologist) named Tullio Simoncini, who claims that cancer is really a fungus and has even written a book about it, entitled, appropriately enough for this […]

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Quackery

Antivaccinationists abuse reporting algorithms to silence pro-vaccine skeptics on Facebook

This is not what I wanted to write about for my first post of 2014, but unfortunately it’s necessary—so necessary, in fact, that I felt the obligation to crosspost it to my not-so-super-secret other blog in order to get this information out to as wide a readership as possible. I’ve always had a bit of […]

Categories
Cancer Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

As 2013 draws to a close in the skeptical world…

As I write this, 2013 is drawing to a close, with only a little more than 12 hours to go before the crowds now gathering at Times Square and elsewhere ring in 2014. For some of you, 2014 has already arrived or will arrive many hours before it does for me. I’m not normally one […]

Categories
Bioethics Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking Sports

When false hope leads well-meaning people astray

One of the frequent topics on this blog is, unsurprisingly, cancer quackery. Be it the Gerson therapy and its propensity for encouraging patients to take hundreds of supplements and to shoot copious amounts of coffee where it really doesn’t belong (where the sun don’t shine), the Gonzalez protocol, homeopathy, naturopathy, or various other nonsensical and […]