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Cancer Clinical trials Medicine Politics Quackery Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Cancer quackery, Republican presidential candidates, and political influence

Yesterday, I wrote about how pediatric neurosurgeon turned presidential candidate Ben Carson is an excellent example demonstrating how the vast majority of physicians and surgeons, even highly accomplished ones admired as being at the top of their professions, are not scientists and how many of them are disturbingly prone to buying into pseudoscience. In Dr. […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Popular culture Pseudoscience Quackery Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Another irresponsible breast cancer alternative cure testimonial

It just occurred to me that Breast Cancer Awareness Month is fast approaching, not the least of which because I did a Komen event last night as one of the breast cancer experts. I sometimes wonder if I suffer from a bit of the imposter syndrome, because sixteen years on I still sometimes can’t believe […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Science Skepticism/critical thinking

The Central Dogma of Alternative Medicine

Molecular biology has a “central dogma,” so why not alternative medicine. Here, I argue that the central dogma of alternative medicine is The Secret.

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Science

In which the NCCIH is questioned…

Orac’s vacation continues apace. Well, not quite. The main reason I’m in London right now is because I was invited to give an actual scientific (as opposed to skeptical) talk at a conference about—of all things—ion channels in cancer. That’s where I am right now, at the Sir Alexander Fleming Building at Imperial College London, […]

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Cancer Clinical trials Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Precision medicine: Hype over hope?

I am fortunate to have become a physician in a time of great scientific progress. Back when I was in college and medical school, the thought that we would one day be able to sequence the human genome (and now sequence hundreds of cancer genomes), to measure the expression of every gene in the genome […]