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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Naturopathy Politics Quackery Religion Science

An Ontario court dooms a First Nations girl with cancer

A few weeks ago, Steve Novella invited me on his podcast, The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe, to discuss a cancer case that has been in the news for several months now. The case was about an 11-year-old girl with leukemia who is a member of Canada’s largest aboriginal community. Steve wrote about this case […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Friday Woo Homeopathy Medicine Naturopathy Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Your Friday Dose of Woo: Naturopathy and “bioresonance”

It’s been a long and entertaining week. Well, at least part of the week was entertaining. After all, it was hard not to be mightily amused at what happened when Dr. Mehmet Oz, known to the world as America’s Doctor but to skeptics as America’s Quack, asked his Twitter followers to ask him anything under […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Humor Medicine Naturopathy Popular culture Quackery Television

America’s quack Dr. Oz asks people to ask him questions on Twitter. Hilariously, the results aren’t quite what he expected.

Getting old sucks. I had a relatively long and busy day in the operating room yesterday, the kind of day that not so long ago I’d handle with no problem. This time around, though, it wiped me out, to the point where not long after dinner I crashed. Hard. Then I woke up around midnight […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Reiki propaganda in U.S. News & World Report

Sigh. Just a week ago, I deconstructed an awful article touting how the mass of prescientific quackery known as traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) as somehow being “validated” by modern science. Specifically, some truly misguided scientists were attempting to use modern systems biology techniques to look for biomarkers associated with TCM diagnoses such as “hot” or […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Tooth Fairy science about traditional Chinese medicine, promoted in the Wall Street Journal

They are winning. I’ve spent nearly ten years on this blog and nearly seven years at my not-so-super secret other blog (where I will likely crosspost this over the weekend) discussing the infiltration of quackery into medicine, both in academic medical centers and, increasingly, even in community medical centers. There’s a term that I wish […]