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Biology Cancer Clinical trials Medicine Pseudoscience Skepticism/critical thinking

Is there a reproducibility "crisis" in biomedical research?

Most scientists I know get a chuckle out of the Journal of Irreproducible Results (JIR), a humor journal that often parodies scientific papers. Back in the day, we used to chuckle at articles like “Any Eye for an Eye for an Arm and a Leg: Applied Dysfunctional Measurement” and “A Double Blind Efficacy Trial of […]

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Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Popular culture Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Better late than never: Orac comments on the hijacking of evidence-based medicine

It’s no secret that I’m a fan of John Ioannidis. (If you don’t believe me, just type Ioannidis’ name into the blog search box and see how many posts you find.) Over the last couple of decades, Ioannidis has arguably done more to reveal the shortcomings of the medical research enterprise that undergirds our treatments, […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Science isn’t perfect, but it’s better than the alternative.

It often comes as a surprise to proponents of alternative medicine and critics of big pharma that I’m a big fan of John Ioannidis. Evidence of this can easily be found right here on this very blog just by entering Ioannidis’ name into the search box. Indeed, my first post about an Ioannidis paper is […]

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Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Science Skepticism/critical thinking

In which David Freedman criticizes health journalism and simultaneously destroys my irony meter

About a year and a half ago, I applied a heapin’ helpin’ of not-so-Respectful Insolence to a a clueless article about the the “triumph” of New Age medicine. The article channeled the worst fallacies of apologists for alternative medicine. Basically, its whole idea appeared to be that, even if most of “complementary and alternative medicine” […]