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On a (hopefully) brief temporary involuntary blog break

It takes a lot to stop Orac from applying Insolence to pseudoscience and quackery. One of the biggest windstorms in his lifetime did it. No jokes about wind.

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Antivaccine nonsense Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Medicine Naturopathy Popular culture Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Hallelujah! The mainstream press finally notices quackademic medicine!

I’ve been writing a long time about a phenomenon that I like to refer to as “quackademic medicine,” defined as the infiltration into academic medical centers and medical school of unscientific and pseudoscientific treatment modalities that are unproven or disproven. Few seem to listen. That’s why it’s reassuring to see a mainstream news publication get it (mostly) right about this phenomenon.

Categories
Cancer Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Popular culture Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

As feared, Houston cancer quack Stanislaw Burzynski (mostly) slithers away from justice again

I’ve been blogging fairly regularly about Houston cancer quack Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski since 2011, and now the story is over…sort of. Unfortunately, as you will see, the ending is far from ideal. It is, however, somewhat better than I had feared it might be. What I’m referring to, of course, is the final ruling of […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine News of the Weird Politics Quackery

Google delists Mike Adams’ NaturalNews.com. His hilarious tantrum about the “conspiracy” behind it is epic, as is my schadenfreude.

Mike Adams the “Health Ranger” runs NaturalNews.com, arguably the wretchedest of wretched hives of scum and quackery on the web. Yesterday, Google delisted it. You’ll forgive me if I indulge in a bit of schadenfreude, given Adams’ long history of promoting quackery, gloating over the deaths of celebrities with cancer who used conventional treatment, and character assassination directed at science advocates, including yours truly.

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Cancer Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy

Homeopathy for breast cancer surgery? Isn’t it bad enough that the patient has cancer and needs a mastectomy?

I like to refer to homeopathy as The One Quackery To Rule Them All, so much so that I almost always call it that within the first two paragraphs of any post I write about some tasty bit of homeopathy pseudoscience. It’s also a wonderful tool for teaching critical thinking because it’s easy to explain […]