The Lung Institute is more evidence that all for-profit stem cell clinics are predatory clinics selling snake oil. EVERY. SINGLE. ONE. OF. THEM. If there's an exception, I haven't found it yet.
Category: Biology
Tetyana Obukhanych swings at the measles immune amnesia studies—and whiffs!
Tetyana Obukhanych has a PhD in immunology but has somehow become antivaccine. This week, she tried to refute two recent studies on immune amnesia induced by measles virus infection. Let's just say that it did not go well.
Immune amnesia: Another reason why measles is a serious illness
Two new studies, this time finding immune amnesia due to measles, show why measles is serious and you should vaccinate your children. That's right, contrary to antivax claims, "natural infection" with measles doesn't "boost the immune system." Quite the contrary!
Brain inflammation, autism, and antivaxers
Another study appears to link chronic inflammation of the brain to autism. Antivaxers, as always, conclude that vaccines done it. This is a continuation of yesterday's discussion.
Fabrizio Benedetti asks: “Does placebo research boost pseudoscience?”
Professor Fabrizio Benedetti is the most famous and almost certainly also the most influential researcher investigating the physiology of placebo effects. In a recent commentary, he asks whether placebo research is fueling quackery, as quacks co-opt its results. The answer to that question is certainly yes. A better question is: How do supporters of science counter the placebo narrative promoted by quacks, in which placebos represent the “power of the mind to heal the body”?
Conspiratorial fear mongering about cell phones and cancer, courtesy of The Nation
The overwhelming scientific consensus is that it is incredibly unlikely that cell phone radiation causes cancer or other health problems. That doesn't stop The Nation from constructing a conspiracy theory inn which cell phone companies are likened to tobacco companies in their campaign of denial designed to hide evidence of harm while disingenuously claiming to be neutral regarding the science and saying that scientists should determine whether radiation from cell phones is hazardous.
The “interstitium”: Interesting science versus PR spin and pseudoscience
Last week, the media were awash with reports of the "interstitium," which was dramatically described as a hitherto undiscovered "organ," a narrative that was definitely a triumph of PR over science that went beyond what even the investigators claimed in their paper. Worse, the investigators themselves even speculated that their discovery could "explain" acupuncture and other kinds of alternative medicine, thus providing an opening for quacks to run wild with their discovery, something I expect to see very soon.
Torturing more mice in the name of antivaccine pseudoscience: PubPeer versus antivaxers
Last week, I wrote about a truly execrable bit of science by Christopher Shaw and Lucija Tomljenovic purporting to show that aluminum adjuvants cause brain inflammation, which causes autism. Since then, I've learned that, not only is it bad science, but that there are red flags about several of the figures to raise the specter of fraud. This might not be just bad science. It might be fraudulent science. The only way to resolve this would be for the authors to release the original full resolution images of their blots.
Torturing more mice in the name of antivaccine pseudoscience, 2017 aluminum edition
Over the last couple of days I noted a disturbance in the antivaccine force, another study claimed to be slam dunk evidence that aluminum adjuvants in vaccines cause autism. It's not. Also, a word to antivaxers challenging Orac to look at this study: Be very careful what you wish for...
IBM Watson: Not living up to hype as a tool to fight cancer?
Five years ago, IBM announced that its supercomputer Watson would revolutionize cancer treatment by using its artificial intelligence to digest and distill the thousands of oncology studies published every year plus patient-level data and expert recommendations into treatment recommendation. Last week, a report published by STAT News shows that, years later, IBM's hubris and hype have crashed into reality.