Categories
Cancer Clinical trials Medicine Skepticism/critical thinking

Obviously a male conspiracy is at work here

Two days after the holidays are over, and I’m still taking care of unfinished business from last year. Still, the study I’m about to discuss is making the rounds of the blogosphere, and because it’s about breast cancer risk I felt the need to weigh in. This is particularly true, given some of the representations […]

Categories
Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

A particularly egregious misrepresentation of a study

While I am on vacation, I’m reprinting a number of “Classic Insolence” posts to keep the blog active while I’m gone. (It also has the salutory effect of allowing me to move some of my favorite posts from the old blog over to the new blog, and I’m guessing that quite a few of my […]

Categories
Cancer Clinical trials Medicine Surgery

On the messiness of evidence-based medicine

I’m about a week late on this one. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if some of my readers were wondering why I hadn’t weighed in on this story when it broke late last week. (Either that, or no one was wondering, and I’m just displaying some of my surgeon’s ego for all to see.) […]

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

What a fine belated blogiversary present: The return of the microfascists (and their micro brownshirts and microtruncheons)

Believe it or not, I missed my own blogiversary. It’s true. It was two days ago. For some reason, as the date approached I got the idea that it was the 13th, when in fact this blog was born on December 11, 2004 on a dreary Saturday afternoon when, after reading the TIME Magazine story […]

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

A belated response to a challenge: Differentiating woo from non-woo in medicine

Over a week ago, fellow ScienceBlogger revere fired a bit of a pot shot across my bow regarding my bow regarding a study regarding, of all things, chicken soup. Initially, it was at a bad time, when I had other things to do, having just labored mightily to produce the latest Hitler Zombie extravaganza, after […]