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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Why nonsense by celebrity doctors ticks me off

Remember Hollie Quinn? She’s the woman who parlayed her “breast cancer cure testimonial” into a book deal, even though she underwent conventional surgical therapy of her cancer. When criticized for this, she came up with an incredibly lame defense of her book. Well, she’s at it again. This time around, she’s touting thermography: As we […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Medicine Quackery

The anti-vaccine movement versus the truth

My alma mater has let me down. As many of you know, I went to the University of Michigan for both my undergraduate degree and for medical school. I still have a fairly strong attachment to the school, which is why I can still be disappointed when its faculty let me down. Unfortunately, it’s happened, […]

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

Drink in the science goodness at the Lorne Trottier Public Science Symposium

I really have to give those guys at McGill University’s Office for Science and Society credit. They’re fast. In fact, they’ve already uploaded video for all the events at the Lorne Trottier Public Science Symposium. Here’s the main page with the videos (the 2010 Trottier Symposium occurred on October 17, 18, and 19), and here […]

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

The economic argument against woo…

Yesterday was a travel day, which means I was too exhausted to grind out a piece of peerless logorrheic prose full of Insolence, Respectful, not-so-Respectful, or both. Fortunately, readers sent me something rather amusing that is also timely given some of the conversations we had at the Lorne Trottier Symposium Monday and Tuesday, where questions […]

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Biology Complementary and alternative medicine Evolution Medicine Quackery Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Selective pressures and the evolution of alternative medicine

The Lorne Trottier Symposium is over, and it went quite well. Amazingly, even though I had to follow Michael Shermer’s talk, people told me I didn’t suck, which made me feel better. Oh, there was this issue of a guy who wanted to tout Royal Rife and his machine. He wouldn’t have irritated me so […]