Categories
Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Homeopaths: Double-blind studies of homeopathic medicines are not ideally possible

Remind me to mark April 10 down on my calendar. I never realized it was such an important day, and, in any case, I wouldn’t want to miss it. Nor should the rest of the skeptical blogosphere. Why? It’s World Homeopathy Day, “celebrated” (or, if you’re a fan of evidence-based medicine, as I am, lamented) […]

Categories
History Holocaust Medicine Skepticism/critical thinking

Is Richard Dawkins endorsing eugenics?

With the internecine sniping that’s been going on lately throughout ScienceBlogs ove Larry Moran’s intemperate “flunk the IDiots” and “Neville Chamberlain school of evolutionists” remarks, or, more specifically, whether opposing ID requires that one oppose religion in general as well, I hesitate to tread here. However, given my interest in the Holocaust, World War II […]

Categories
Medicine

The Angry Professor responds to a student

If I taught a class in these days of professor evaluations depending so much on student evaluations, I’m not sure I’d have the guts to respond to a student’s request to be excused so that he can go to a bowl game the way the Angry Professor responds. Of course, if the school were the […]

Categories
Medicine

Is rock ‘n’ roll stardom dangerous to your health?

The PathGuy makes the case, with a large number of case studies of rock and pop stars who died at young ages. Unfortunately, there’s no systematic epidemiological study that I’m aware of about whether rock ‘n’ roll stars have a shorter life expectancy or higher rate of traumatic death or death due to disease. We […]

Categories
Medicine Surgery

Something every surgeon should have: LifeStat

Here’s something I’ve been meaning to post for a while that somehow got buried in my list of cool, weird, or interesting links. One of the things they teach surgeons and emergency medicine doctors about is how to use common materials at hand to do, MacGyver-like, a cricothyroidotomy to save the life of someone who […]