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Announcements Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

The 79th Skeptic’s Circle – Rollin With Teh Lol-ling

Ack! The new Skeptic’s Circle is here! Yes, the 79th Meeting of the Skeptics’ Circle has convened over at Podblack Blog, and it’s another great collection of skeptical blogging. So why am I disturbed? I just realized that I’ve utterly failed in my organizer duties in that I totally forgot to submit one of my […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Quackery

NCCAM: Your tax dollars hard at work funding woo

I used to be somewhat of a supporter of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM). I really did. This was back when I was more naïve and idealistic. Indeed, when I first read Wally Sampson’s article Why NCCAM should be defunded, I thought it a bit too strident and even rather close-minded. […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Reclaiming the linguistic high ground: Renaming “complementary and alternative” medicine and the power of language

A few days ago, I was amused by a term coined by Dr. R.W. The term, “quackademic medicine,” was meant to describe the unholy fusion of non-science- and non-evidence-based woo that has infiltrated academic medicine to a disturbing extent over the last decade or two. There was a lot of reaction, mainly positive, to the […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Entertainment/culture Medicine Popular culture Quackery Television

More on the antivaccination propaganda in “Eli Stone”

Last week, I did one of my inimitable rants about an ABC television show set to air on Thursday called Eli Stone, in which a lawyer sues a pharmaceutical company for “mercuritol” (an obvious allusion to thimerosal) in vaccines and how it supposedly caused a child’s autism. Basically, I called it an irresponsible bit of […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

David Kirby: When you’re in a hole over vaccines and autism, get out the back hoe and dig deeper!

Pity poor David Kirby. Nearly three years ago now, he published his now-infamous Evidence of Harm: Mercury in Vaccines and the Autism Epidemic, A Medical Mystery. Hooking up with the most vocal of the mercury militia, his book blamed mercury in vaccines as the major cause of autism. Unfortunately for Kirby, time has not been […]