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Cancer Clinical trials Medicine Surgery

The paradox of screening mammography and breast cancer

If there’s one thing that lay people (and, indeed, many physicians) don’t understand about screening for cancer is that it is anything but a simple matter. Intuitively, it seems that earlier detection should always be better, and it can be. However, as I explained in two lengthy posts last year, such is not always the […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

EpiWonk shoots and scores: Kirby admits his error

I could resist a brief mention of this. Remember yesterday’s post, when I discussed how EpiWonk had deconstructed and demolished David Kirby’s latest mangling of epidemiology and willful misreading of government reports? Apparently it had an effect. It would appear that Mr. Kirby may actually have read it and taken it to heart. (Either that, […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

EpiWonk schools David Kirby in epidemiology so that Orac doesn’t have to

At this stage of the game, I almost feel sorry for David Kirby. Think about it. He’s made his name and what little fame he has (which isn’t much outside of the tinhat crowd that thinks the guv’mint is intentionally poisoning their children with vaccines to make them all autistic) almost entirely on the basis […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Humor Medicine Quackery

If celebrity antivaccinationist Jenny McCarthy were ever to read Respectful Insolence™…

…Orac might be in trouble: (Click for the full comic.) I wonder if I should hire a guard. Actually, I think reading Respectful Insolence™ might do Jenny McCarthy some good, especially this post (or maybe this post, too). Unfortunately, she’s too deluded and arrogant to realize how scientifically ignorant she is; so it would probably […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Friday Woo Medicine Quackery

Your Friday Dose of Woo: The boneyard of forgotten woo

I know I like to say that woo is eternal, and it is. That doesn’t, however, mean that individual examples of woo are necessarily eternal. Some, it seems, are. Does anyone doubt, for example, that homeopathy, which has been around for over two hundred years now, will still be around 200 years from now? I’d […]