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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Entertainment/culture Medicine Popular culture Quackery Surgery Television

Blogging Suzanne Somers Knockout, part 2: Is Somers a female Mike Adams?

This project is behind schedule. The reasons, I hope, are forgivable. First off, there was just too much other stuff going on last week, to the point where, even though I’ve read several chapters of Suzanne Somers’ new book (if you can call it that) Knockout: Interviews with Doctors Who Are Curing Cancer–And How to […]

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Cancer Clinical trials Medicine

Cancer prevention drugs, supplements, and a false dichotomy

The New York Times has been periodically running a series about the “40 years’ war” on cancer, with most articles by Gina Kolata. I’ve touched on this series before, liking some parts of it, while others not so much. In particular, I criticized an article one article that I thought to be so misguided about […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Entertainment/culture Humor Medicine Television

Bill Maher flames out in a pyre of stupidity over vaccines–again

Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in again. Yes, I know I’ve used this clip before at least twice and the line in it several more times over the last couple of years. However, sometimes it’s just so completely appropriate to how I’m feeling about a topic I’m about to […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Medicine Naturopathy Quackery

Naturopathy versus science

Naturopathy has been a recurrent topic on this blog. The reasons should be obvious. Although homeopathy is the one woo to rule them all in the U.K. and much of Europe, here in the U.S. homeopathy is not nearly as big a deal. Arguably, some flavor of naturopathy is the second most prevalent “alternative medical […]

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Cancer Medicine Skepticism/critical thinking

When skepticism about medicine devolves into nihilism

A couple of weeks ago, the ever-inimitably sarcastic master of pus himself, Mark Crislip, posted an excellent deconstruction of a very disappointing article that was published in the most recent issue of Skeptical Inquirer, the flagship publication of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI). I say “disappointing,” because I was disappointed to see SI (Skeptical […]