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Complementary and alternative medicine Friday Woo Homeopathy Physics Quackery

It’s not just homeopathy, it’s quantum homeopathy, which is so much better

Note: Orac is away somewhere warm recharging his Tarial cells for further science and skepticism. In the meantime, he is rerunning some of his favorite posts. Because it’s vacation, he thought he’d rerun a fun post. He needs it; vacation is almost over, and it’s back to work on Monday. So, here’s one from 2007. […]

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Biology Medicine Physics Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Thanks, CWRU, for forcing me to get the paper bag out again

It’s rare that I have much in the way of reluctance to leap into writing about a topic. Any regular reader of this blog should know this to be true, given the topics I regularly take on and how often my writing draws flak my way from various proponents of quackery and pseudoscience, in particular […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Intelligent design/creationism Medicine Physics Pseudoscience Science Skepticism/critical thinking

A profound misunderstanding of the significance of cranks in science

I’ve spent a lot of time over the years looking at cranks, examining crank science (i.e., pseudoscience), and trying to figure out how to inoculate people against crankery. Because I’m a physician, I tend to do it mostly in the realm of medicine by critically examining “alternative” medical claims and discussing the scientific basis of […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Biology Complementary and alternative medicine Evolution Medicine Physics Quackery Science Skepticism/critical thinking

HuffPo now has a science section, and I remain skeptical that it changes anything.

It’s no secret that I’ve been highly critical of The Huffington Post, at least of its approach to science and medicine. In fact, it was a mere three weeks after Arianna Huffington launched her blog back in 2005 that I noticed something very distressing about it, namely that it had recruited someone who would later […]

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Paranormal Physics Pseudoscience Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Shhhh, be vewy, vewy quiet. I’m hunting ghosts…

Ever since starting my blog nearly seven (!) years ago, I’ve concentrated mainly on skepticism in medicine, in particular examining various implausible medical claims that proliferate on the Internet and in our media like so much kudzu choking out science and reason. The reasons are two-fold. First, it’s what I’m interested in. Second, it was […]