Categories
Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Skepticism/critical thinking

Yawn, still one more overhyped acupuncture study: Does acupuncture help infertile women conceive?

Oops, they did it again. You think the media would learn after the last time, but no…. There it was on Friday greeting me on the ABC News website: “Study: Acupuncture May Boost Pregnancy” in bold blue letters, with the title of the webpage being “Needles Help You Become Pregnant.” Wow, what a claim! Naturally, […]

Categories
Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Essential reading: Why prior probability is important in considering the results of clinical trials of so-called “complementary and alternative medicine”

I’ve become known as an advocate for evidence-based medicine (EBM) in the three years since I started this little bit of ego gratification known as Respectful Insolence™. One thing this exercise has taught me that I might never have learned before (and that I’ve only reluctantly begun to accept as true) is one huge problem […]

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Bioethics Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

The justification for NCCAM: “What can be done to generate a better placebo?”

It’s probably an understatement to say that I’ve been critical of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM). Indeed, I consider it not only to be a boondoggle that wastes the taxpayers’ money funding pseudoscience, but a key promoter of quackery. Worse, its promotion of highly implausible (one might even say magical) modalities […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Entertainment/culture Medicine Politics Popular culture Quackery

The Huffington Post delves deeper into the woo

Since its very inception, the Huffington Post has been a hotbed of antivaccine lunacy. Shortly after that, antivaccine woo-meisters like David Kirby, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Kimg Stagliano, and, apparently, one of the editors (Special Projects Editor Rachel Sklar) were joined by all-purpose woo-meisters like Deepak Chopra. True, for a brief period of time there […]

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Cancer Clinical trials Medicine Science

Academia: Slowing down the search for cures?

I was very happy with NEWSWEEK recently, specifically because of its lengthy expose of Oprah Winfrey and her promotion of pseudoscience, mysticism, and quackery on her talk show. However, I haven’t always been that thrilled with NEWSWEEK’s coverage of medicine and science. For example, NEWSWEEK’s science columnist Sharon Begley has gotten on my nerves on […]