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Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Humor Medicine

So true, so true…

What should a drug company do if it spends millions of dollars on a compound and it doesn’t do anything? Easy: (Click on the panel to see the whole cartoon.) In fact, I’m surprised more pharmaceutical companies don’t do this…

Categories
Cancer Clinical trials Medicine Science

Cancer research explained briefly

One reason I (and most people involved in cancer research) don’t like the frequently used term “cure for cancer.” The reason is simple. Embedded within this term is the assumption that cancer is just one disease, when it is most definitely not. Rather, it is many diseases affecting many organs, each with its own mechanism […]

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

Another acupuncture study misinterpreted

I have to hand it to acupuncture mavens. They are persistent. Despite numerous studies failing to find any evidence that acupuncture is anything more than an elaborate placebo whose effects, such as they are, derive from nonspecifice mechanisms having nothing to do with meridians, qi, or “unblocking” qi. Moreover, consistent with the contention that acupuncture […]

Categories
Bioethics Clinical trials Medicine Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Quoth Elsevier: “Whoops, I did it again.” (Six times, actually)

Remember about a week ago, when I lamented how scientific publisher Elsevier had created a fake journal for Merck that reprinted content from other Elsevier journals favorable to Merck products in a format that looked every bit like a peer-reviewed journal but without any disclaimers to let the unwary know that it wasn’t a peer-reviewed […]

Categories
Bioethics Clinical trials Medicine

When big pharma pays a publisher to publish a fake journal…

It’s times like these when I’m happy that I haven’t published in too many Elsevier Journals during the course of my career. I say that because on Thursday, it was revealed that pharmaceutical company Merck, Sharp & Dohme paid Elsevier to produce a fake medical journal that, to any superficial examination, looked like a real […]