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Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Yawn. Another study tries to convince us that mind-body interventions can “reprogram our DNA.” It fails.

A recent systematic review has been touted as demonstrating that “mind-body” practices like yoga can reprogram our DNA. There are several reasons to doubt these claims, not the least of which is the history of bias in past studies on this topic.

Categories
Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Pseudoscience Skepticism/critical thinking

A compound derived from marijuana decreases seizure frequency in children with Dravet syndrome, and there’s nothing “miraculous” about it

There’s a new clinical trial published in the New England Journal of Medicine showing a beneficial effect due to cannabidiol, a chemical isolated from marijuana, on drug-resistant seizures due to Dravet syndrome. Medical marijuana advocates are crowing, “I told you so!” As is usually the case, the real story is more nuanced.

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Antivaccine nonsense Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

A horrendously bad “vaxed/unvaxed” study rises from the dead yet again

Antivaccine “studies” never die. They always return to promote disease among children.

Categories
Bioethics Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Popular culture Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

No, torturing colicky infants by sticking them with acupuncture needles won’t calm them

So I was distracted yesterday from what I had intended to write about by an irresistible target provided me courtesy of Toby Cosgrove, MD, CEO of The Cleveland Clinic, who bemoaned all those nasty pro-science advocates who had had the temerity to link the antivaccine rant by the director of the Clinic’s Wellness Institute to […]

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Biology Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

And now for a little tooth fairy science on meditation…

Back in the day, Deepak Chopra used to be a frequent topic of this blog. He still pops up from time to time, such as when irony meters everywhere immediately self-destructed after Chopra criticized Donald Trump for being insufficiently evidence-based or when, after I wrote a post asking why medical conferences keep inviting Chopra to […]