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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

No, it is not okay to give patients a treatment with no proved medical benefits

Et tu, Scientific American? A few of you seem to know what will catch my attention and push my buttons, because over the past couple of days a few of you sent me an article published in Scientific America by an internal medicine resident named Allison Bond entitled Sometimes It’s Okay to Give Patients a […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Science Skepticism/critical thinking

In the pages of Nature, a full-throated defense of “integrating” quackery into medicine

Oh, no, Nature. Not you. Not again. It wasn’t enough that you were busted shilling for traditional Chinese medicine with a big, glossy advertising supplement a few years ago. I thought you had learned your lesson after that, as you didn’t do it again. Maybe I was wrong. Granted, your offense this time is not […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Medicine Quackery Science Skepticism/critical thinking

A portrait of quackademia triumphant: Georgetown University

I frequently discuss a disturbing phenomenon known as “quackademic medicine.” Basically, quackademic medicine is a phenomenon that has taken hold over the last two decades in medical academia in which once ostensibly science-based medical schools and academic medical centers embrace quackery. This embrace was once called “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM) but among quackademics the […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Mouse magic, or How lab mice learned to stop worrying and trust the healing energy

I frequently call homeopathy The One Quackery to Rule Them All, but there are times when I am not so sure that that’s the case. You see, there is…another. I’m referring, of course, to what is referred to as “energy medicine.” What energy medicine modalities have in common is that they postulate that there is […]

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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 […]