Categories
Cancer Clinical trials Medicine Popular culture Pseudoscience Skepticism/critical thinking

Do medical errors really kill a quarter of a million people a year in the US?

It is an unquestioned belief among believers in alternative medicine and even just among many people who do not trust conventional medicine that conventional medicine kills. Not only does exaggerating the number of people who die due to medical complications or errors fit in with the world view of people like Mike Adams and Joe […]

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

What’s in a word? “Integrative” versus “alternative” medicine, again

I’ve written a lot about the language issue with respect to alternative medicine. As I like to put it (at least in shortened form), first there was quackery. Quacks did not like that name at all, and thus was born alternative medicine. And the quacks did think it good—for a while. There was a problem, […]

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Biology Cancer Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Science Skepticism/critical thinking

John Oliver teaches us how to interpret medical and scientific studies

It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of John Oliver. When my aging body allows me to stay awake late enough on Sunday nights and there’s a new episode on, I’ll almost always be watching. Since starting his own show Last Week Tonight With John Oliver on HBO, Oliver’s become quite the expert at […]

Categories
Cancer Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Yet again, acupuncture does not work for menopausal hot flashes

Arguably, one of the most popular forms of so-called “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM) being “integrated” with real medicine by those who label their specialty “integrative medicine” is acupuncture. It’s particularly popular in academic medical centers as a subject of what I like to refer to as “quackademic medicine“; that is, the study of pseudoscience […]

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

Better late than never: Orac comments on the hijacking of evidence-based medicine

It’s no secret that I’m a fan of John Ioannidis. (If you don’t believe me, just type Ioannidis’ name into the blog search box and see how many posts you find.) Over the last couple of decades, Ioannidis has arguably done more to reveal the shortcomings of the medical research enterprise that undergirds our treatments, […]