Categories
Medicine Pareidolia Pseudoscience Skepticism/critical thinking

A pareidoliec blast from the past

After attending the ASCO Meeting in Chicago over two weeks ago, I can’t believe I forgot to post about this. More than two years ago, back in my favorite city (Chicago), a vision of the Virgin Mary appeared. It appeared, oddly enough, as such visions are wont to do, in a rather mundane spot. Specifically, […]

Categories
Blogging Personal

This rating sounds about right

This one’s been floating around ScienceBlogs and the blogosphere in general; so I thought, what the hell? (Oh, wait, did my use of the word “hell” affect my rating?) In any case, this sounds about right: Mingle2 – Online Dating You’ll be happy to know that I don’t really plan on trying to “evolve” to […]

Categories
History Medicine News of the Weird

A bit of “irrational exuberance” about medical breakthroughs from the 1930’s

There are lots of medical discoveries today that are breathlessly hyped far beyond what their actual benefits are likely to be. This, apparently, is not a new phenomenon, as this story shows. (Click on the pictures above for larger images of all four pages of the article, which appeared in 1939.) On the other hand, […]

Categories
Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

The Cheerful Oncologist discusses the Abraham Cherrix case

The Cheerful Oncologist, noting my recent post about the relapse of Abraham Cherrix’s lymphoma in the lung, has done an analysis from–of course!–an oncologist’s viewpoint. Given that I don’t treat lymphoma, other than doing the occasional lymph node biopsy to diagnose it, his viewpoint is well worth reading. He quite correctly points out that Abraham’s […]

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

Your Friday Dose of Woo: The quantum homeopathic gyroscopic circle is complete

In my rigid, Western, scientific way of thinking, things generally have a beginning, a middle, and and end, the arrow of time marching relentlessly onward. However, it occurs to me that this is the very last edition of Your Friday Dose of Woo of its first year. Last June, when I started this, almost on […]