Categories
Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Naturopathy Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Criticizing the Trial to Asess Chelation Therapy (TACT) is defending science-based medicine

When I wrote about the Trial to Assess Chelation Therapy (TACT) trial last week, little did I suspect that I would be revisiting the topic again so soon. For those of you not familiar with TACT, it was a trial designed to test a favorite quack treatment for cardiovascular disease, chelation therapy. It is, as […]

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

A founding father of quackademic medicine speaks

It’s been a while since I’ve written about Brian Berman. We first met him when he somehow managed to insinuate a “case report” of chronic low back pain into The New England Journal of Medicine in which he recommended acupuncture for this patient. Dr. Berman also happens to be a founder of quackademic medicine on […]

Categories
Bioethics Biology Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Quackery

The “myth” of placebo effects

Heidi Stevenson amuses me. The reasons are legion. Be it the time when Heidi lectured scientists on anecdotal evidence (which she values far more highly than scientists, of course, declaring it the “basis of all knowledge”); launched a vile and nonsensical attack on Stephen Barrett; argued against prior plausibility with using a straw man argument […]

Categories
Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Disease, “dis-ease,” what’s the difference?

I’ve had a rule of thumb for a while that helps me identify quacks with a high degree of accuracy. It’s not very sensitive, as a lot of quacks don’t exhibit this trait, but it’s very specific. A lot of quacks don’t use the term; so not hearing says nothing about a practitioner. If you […]

Categories
Complementary and alternative medicine Friday Woo Homeopathy Medicine Quackery Science

Your Friday Dose of Woo: Homeopathic gene therapy?

It’s been a long time, been a long time, been a long lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely time. Besides indulging my taste for shamelessly working lyrics from Led Zeppelin and other classic bands into my post, what am I talking about? Simple. Things have been way too serious lately. I mean, just look at yesterday’s post. […]