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Cancer Medicine Quackery

ASCO’s new guidelines promote quackery for cancer pain

Recently, the American Society of Clinical Oncology and the Society for Integrative Oncology published guidelines for treating cancer pain. These guidelines endorsed quackery like reflexology and acupuncture. The infiltration of quackademic medicine continues apace in oncology.

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Politics Popular culture

Return of the revenge of “no saline placebo RCTs” for childhood vaccines

Thanks to RFK Jr. the deceptive claim that the childhood vaccine schedule has never been tested in a randomized controlled trial with a saline placebo control is making the rounds again.This is an old and deceptive antivax half-truth that ignores both what constitutes a scientifically valid placebo and the ethical requirement that RCTs have clinical equipoise.

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Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Medicine

Dr. Pierre Kory: Sex, lies, and (COVID-19 vaccine) shedding

Dr. Pierre Kory, who is now undeniably antivaccine, has claimed on Substack that “shedding” from COVID-19 vaccines can transmit the dreaded vaccine evil humors through sex. As bonkers as this all is, it appears to be time to address this topic again.

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Biology Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Integrative medicine Pseudoscience Quackery

Fabrizio Benedetti asks: “Does placebo research boost pseudoscience?”

Professor Fabrizio Benedetti is the most famous and almost certainly also the most influential researcher investigating the physiology of placebo effects. In a recent commentary, he asks whether placebo research is fueling quackery, as quacks co-opt its results. The answer to that question is certainly yes. A better question is: How do supporters of science counter the placebo narrative promoted by quacks, in which placebos represent the “power of the mind to heal the body”?

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Antivaccine nonsense Clinical trials Medicine

How EBM fundamentalism was weaponized against public health in 2023

Evidence-based medicine (EBM) has been a very useful paradigm for assessing evidence in medicine. However, like any other framework, it can be misused, particularly when fundamentalist EBM methodolatry leads to its inappropriate application to questions for which it is ill-suited, a misuse that has been weaponized against public health during the pandemic.