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Announcements Blog housekeeping Blogging Medicine

And the box of blinky lights has arrived in Manchester for QEDCon

As you probably noticed, I didn’t manage a post yesterday. Nor did I manage one today, other than this. That’s because I was busy preparing for QEDCon, where I will be on a panel and giving a talk, and, of course, putting together my talk. As I write this, I’m horrendously jet lagged; so I […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Medicine Naturopathy Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking Surgery

On the "integration" of quackery into the medical school curriculum

Ever since the $200 million gift by Susan and Henry Samueli to UC-Irvine, I’ve been thinking about the “integration” of quackery into medicine through integrative medicine. The way advocates of quackademic medicine are going to make this “integration” really happen is to start with the medical schools.

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Autism Bioethics Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Another antivaccine paper bites the dust

Christopher Shaw and Lucija Tomljenovic are known for producing dubious scientific studies in the service of antivaccine pseudoscience. Last month, they published a paper purporting to show that aluminum adjuvant causes neuroinflammation in mice that was roundly criticized for poor experimental design and manipulated images. Guess what? It’s soon to be retracted.

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

A conversation with a Rigvir flack

My skeptical analysis of Rigvir, a “Virotherapy” from Latvia being promoted by alternative medicine clinics as a cancer cure, caught the attention of the International Virotherapy Center (IVC). The result was a long and very telling e-mail exchange between its Assistant of Business Development and myself. I post it because the arguments used in the discussion are very telling about where the IVC is coming from when it comes to science. Hint: It’s not a good place.

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Naturopaths: Able to turn even Epsom salt potentially deadly

Epsom salt, like the Earth in The Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy, is mostly harmless; that is, except in the hands of a naturopath.