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Bad science Complementary and alternative medicine Integrative medicine Medicine Popular culture Quackery

Traditional Chinese medicine is science, ma-an! National Geographic promotes quackery

TCM Shop
Traditional Chinese medicine is science? Not really...

There’s a whole genre of quack apologia for traditional Chinese medicine that I like to call “traditional Chinese medicine is science, ma-an!” Basically, it tries to convince you that the prescientific, mystical, vitalistic mass of nonsense that is traditional Chinese medicine is “ancient knowledge” that was far ahead of its time and that its wisdom will be rediscovered to become the future of medicine. It’s utter nonsense, of course. Unfortunately, in its January issue, National Geographic fell for this myth—hard.

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Bad science Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Vaxelis: The first hexavalent vaccine is approved in the US, and antivaxers don’t like it

Vaxelis
Vaccine in vial with syringe. Vaccination concept. 3d

Over the holidays, on the day after Christmas, Merck and Sanofi announced FDA approval of Vaxelis, a new hexavalent vaccine. It’s great news for children. Unsurprisingly, antivaxers hate it.

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Bad science Complementary and alternative medicine Integrative medicine Pseudoscience Quackery

Quoth chiropractor William Cole: “Have your doctor run a bunch of useless functional medicine tests”

William Cole and huge invoices

“Functional medicine” preaches the “biochemical individuality” of each patient, which is why one of its key features is that its practitioners order reams of useless lab tests and then try to correct every abnormal level without considering (or even knowing) what these abnormalities mean, if anything. So they make up fake diagnoses and profit.

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Announcements Blog housekeeping

Happy Holidays from Orac! See you next year!

Merry Christmas
Snowman

Happy holidays, all! As I mentioned a few days ago, I’m taking a brief blog break for the holidays. I hope that, wherever you are, whatever faith you hold (or don’t hold), your holidays are filled with cheer. I’ll return either Monday or January 2, depending upon how energetic I’m feeling and what is or isn’t going on in the world regarding topics that concern me.

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Autism Bad science Medicine Popular culture Pseudoscience Quackery

Dr. Ken Walker (a.k.a. Dr. W. Gifford-Jones) plays the martyr over his antivaccine op-ed

W. Gifford-Jones, a.k.a. Dr. Ken Walker

Dr. Ken Walker (more famously known as Canadian syndicated columnist Dr. W. Gifford-Jones) wrote an antivaccine op-ed for The Toronto Sun so full of antivaccine misinformation that was retracted after a flurry of complaints and bad publicity. Now, he plays the martyr. Unfortunately for him, he does it while spewing the same sort of antivaccine misinformation for which his previous op-ed had been retracted.