Categories
Medicine Politics Popular culture Pseudoscience Science Skepticism/critical thinking Surgery

Repealing motorcycle helmet laws: Making motorcycles even more into donorcycles

It’s a seldom mentioned aspect of my professional history that I used to do a lot of trauma surgery in my youth. I did my residency at a program that included a county hospital with a busy trauma program where I saw quite a bit of vehicular carnage and an urban hospital (which has since […]

Categories
Medicine Skepticism/critical thinking Surgery

Hubris versus skepticism: The case of neurosurgeon Ben Carson

As a surgeon and skeptic, I find neurosurgeon turned presidential candidate Ben Carson to be particularly troubling. I realize that I’ve said this before, but it’s hard for me not to revisit his strange case given that the New York Times just ran a rather revealing profile of him over the weekend, part of which […]

Categories
Bioethics Medicine Science Surgery

An appalling tale of surgical “teaching” in the operating room

As much as I write about the foibles, pseudoscience, and misadventures of cranks and quacks that endanger patients. However, never let it be said that I don’t also pay attention to the foibles and misadventures of real doctors that endanger patients. Sometimes that occurs due to incompetence. Sometimes it’s due to the persistent use of […]

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Medicine Popular culture Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking Surgery Television

America’s quack, dissected yet again

If there’s one doctor who irritates me possibly more than any other, it’s got to be “America’s Doctor,” a.k.a. Dr. Mehmet Oz, thanks to The Dr. Oz Show. He’s been an all too frequent topic on this blog and at my not-so-super-secret other blog. Of course, I refer to him as “America’s quack,” because, well, […]

Categories
Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Surgery

The quack view of preventing cancer versus reality and Angelina Jolie, part 3

I happen to be in Houston right now attending the Society of Surgical Oncology annual meeting. Sadly, I’m only about 12 miles away from the lair of everybody’s favorite faux clinical researcher and purveyor of a cancer cure that isn’t, Stanislaw Burzynski. Such is life. In any case, this conference is all about cancer and […]