Categories
Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Quackery

Quackademic medicine invades the military again

As much as I write about the infiltration of quackademic medicine into medical academia, there is one particular area that is being increasingly invaded by such quackery. It’s an area that you wouldn’t necessarily expect, although anyone who’s read The Men Who Stare at Goats might not be so shocked. Yes, I’m referring to the […]

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Cancer Clinical trials

Are mouse "avatars" useful for predicting human response to chemotherapy and targeted agents in cancer?

From time to time, I tussle with various animal rights activists online. Over the summer, unfortunately the radical animal rights types, those who think that, at the very least, vandalism is perfectly acceptable in the name of their cause, some of whom think that action up to and including murder of scientists could potentially be […]

Categories
Clinical trials Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Our pharma overlords will be displeased…

There’s an oft-quoted saying that’s become a bit of a cliché among skeptics that goes something like this: There are two kinds of medicine: medicine that’s been proven scientifically to work, and medicine that hasn’t. This is then often followed up with a rhetorical question and its answer: What do call “alternative medicine” that’s been […]

Categories
Biology Cancer Clinical trials Medicine Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Overselling preclinical results

As part of my ongoing effort to make sure that I never run out of blogging material, I subscribe to a number of quack e-mail newsletters. In fact, sometimes I think I’ve probably overdone it. Every day, I get several notices and pleas from various wretched hives of scum and quackery, such as NaturalNews.com, Mercola.com, […]

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Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Science

A crank attacks the Human Genome Project

The Human Genome Project (HGP) was one of the most massive scientific undertakings in recent years and, from a basic science and technology development standpoint, one of the most productive. The data gained formed the basis of the genomic revolution. And “revolution” is the right word. A mere 12 years after the human genome sequence […]