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Cancer Clinical trials Medicine

The mammography wars heat up again

Unfortunately, it’s grant application crunch time again over the weekend. That means something’s got to give, and what happened to be the thing to give was this blog. Fortunately, all is not lost, as a “good friend” of mine has commented on a recent New England Journal of Medicine study from Thursday about mammography. It […]

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Medicine

Archaeology in the communal refrigerator

If there’s one scary thing about working, it’s the common kitchen area. On each floor of the research tower where my lab is located, there is a small area at the end of the hall with a sink, coffee maker, refrigerator, and some cabinets. These areas are all too rarely cleaned out. Last week, for […]

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

Your Friday Dose of Woo: Activate your DNA!

Every so often, real life intrudes on blogging, preventing the creation of fresh Insolence, at least Insolence of the quality that you’ve come to expect. This is one of those times. Besides getting into full R01 grant-writing swing, I went out to dinner last night with a visiting professor and didn’t get home until too […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Medicine Naturopathy Quackery

A highly revealing quote from a naturopath

Naturopathy is a strange beast in the “alternative medicine” world. From what I’ve been able to tell, it’s a wastebasket specialty with no overarching philosophical underpinnings, as traditional Chinese medicine underpins acupuncture or sympathetic magic underpins homeopathy. Basically, if it’s woo, naturopaths will use it. Acupuncture, TCM, homeopathy, herbalism, nutritional woo, detox, it doesn’t matter. […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Medicine

How not to achieve respectability

Sometimes I can’t figure anti-vaccine loons out. No, I’m not talking about the pure pseudoscience they lay down on a daily basis. I can sort of get how some of them might cling against all scientific evidence to the idea that somehow vaccines “damaged” their child, along with the blandishments of the army of quacks […]