Aromatase inhibitors are antiestrogen drugs frequently used to treat breast cancer. Unfortunately, they can cause significant joint pain. A recent study of acupuncture for joint pain caused by these drugs was basically negative, but the authors did their best to spin it as positive. Same as it ever was for acupuncture studies.
Category: Pseudoscience
One Conversation: Three legitimate medical authorities ensnared in the trap of appearing on a panel with antivaxers
I was invited to discuss vaccines with antivaxers for a panel called One Conversation. Recognizing an antivaccine trap, I politely declined. Unfortunately, other legitimate medical authorities did not, thus enabling the illusion of legitimization of antivaccine views.
The “Drs. Wolfson” attack the parents of Riley Hughes, who died of pertussis
Riley Hughes died of pertussis, and his father is trying to encourage vaccination against pertussis. The "Drs. Wolfson" object. They're antivaccine quacks, and they blame the victim.
European Atherosclerosis Society: Publishing quackademic pseudoscience about traditional Chinese medicine in its official journal
The latest issue of the official journal of the European Atherosclerosis Society features a credulous article on traditional Chinese medicine. TCM is presented as a system of medicine whose use should "spread to Western societies." Sadly, the editors failed here, as the article consists of revisionist history, pseudoscience, and false equivalence.
Helene Langevin is named NCCIH director. Let the quackery flow again!
Helene Langevin has been named the new director of the National Center for Complemenary and Integrative Health. Given her history of dodgy acupuncture research, my prediction is that the quackery will flow again at NCCIH, the way it did in the 1990s when Tom Harkin zealously protected it from any attempt to impose scientific rigor on it.
An antivaccine nurse (or physician) should not take care of children, period
In Houston, a toddler was admitted to the pediatric ICU at Texas Children's Hospital with a serious case of the measles. Unfortunately, one of the nurses there is antivaccine and blabbed about him on social media. The hospital quite appropriately fired her, but I would go further and say that antivaccine nurses should not be caring for children. Ditto antivaccine doctors.
Thanks Andrew Wakefield. Thanks for making measles great again.
It seems as though I have to write a post like this every year or two, as measles outbreaks keep raging and children keep getting sick and even dying. I feel obligated to "thank" the primary author of this misery, the man whose scientific fraud and other efforts have fueled antivaxers' fear of the MMR vaccine. So thanks Andrew Wakefield. Thanks for the measles. Again. In 2018.
J. B. Handley fought the vaccine science, and the vaccine science won.
Our old friend anti antivaccine activist J. B. Handley invokes the “vaccines didn’t save us” gambit. It doesn’t go well for him. You could say that he fought vaccine science, but, as always, the vaccine science won.
Adult vaccine pledge. (Translation: “Wake up, sheeple!”)
Orac recently came across an antivaccine post called "The Adult Vaccine Pledge." So he deconstructed it. It did not go well—for the Adult Vaccine Pledge.
Is the misrepresentation of scientific findings by antivaxers leading to self-censorship by scientists?
Melinda Wenner Moyer published an article in The New York Times arguing that fear of how antivaxers will react to scientific findings is leading scientists to indulge in self-censorship. I’m not convinced that this is the case.