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Announcements Complementary and alternative medicine Quackery

Baseball, cupping, and quackademic medicine

I hate to do this to you guys twice in one week, but sometimes the situation mandates it. Basically, there’s no new Insolence today. I do, however, have an excuse. Because of a gift the Ilitch family gave to our department, a couple of times a year our department is invited to attend a Tigers […]

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Medicine

My last word (I hope): Michael Phelps, cupping, and "integrative medicine"

As I mentioned yesterday, there are news events involving medicine (more specifically pseudoscience in medicine) that are so ubiquitous and irritating that they’re enough to bring me briefly out of my vacation to bang out a quick post. So it was when I wrote my post yesterday about Michael Phelps’ enthusiasm for cupping, a practice […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Sports

Thanks, Michael Phelps, for glamorizing cupping quackery!

So, in case you hadn’t noticed, I was taking a brief vacation, a long weekend if you will. As a result, I hadn’t planned on posting new completely original material until Wednesday or Thursday. (Monday’s post, some of you noticed, was a modified crosspost from my not-so-super-secret other blog.) Then something happened.

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Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Medicine Naturopathy Quackery

What’s the harm? Cupping edition

There are so many ridiculous alternative medicine treatments being “integrated” via “integrative” medicine into medicine, no matter how ridiculous they are, that it’s not only hard to believe, but it’s hard to keep track. Homeopathy is, of course, the most ridiculous, although “energy medicine” definitely gives homeopathy a run for its money in the Department […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Maya's Marvelous Acupuncture?

As hard as it is to believe, there was once a time when I didn’t think that acupuncture was quackery, an ancient “Eastern” treatment that “evolved” from bloodletting not unlike bloodletting in ancient “Western” bloodletting. This time was, hard as it is to believe, less than eight years ago, right around the time just before […]