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Bioethics Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Quackery Science

The Guatemala syphilis experiment, human subjects research abuses, and CAM

If there’s one thing that burns me about so-called “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM) clinical trials, it’s how unethical many of them are. This is particularly true for trials that test modalities that, on the basic science grounds alone, can be dismissed as so highly implausible and with such a low prior probability of success […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Dr. Mark Hyman: Let’s turn back the clock on science-based medicine in favor of anecdote-based medicine

I sometimes think I ought to send a thank you letter to Dr. Mark Hyman. True, I don’t owe him quite as much as I owe, for example, Mike Adams of NaturalNews.com, anyone on the blogging crew of the anti-vaccine crank propaganda blog Age of Autism, Dr. Jay Gordon, or several other pseudoscientists, quacks, or […]

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Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Medicine Quackery

What’s in a placebo? Mike Adams certainly doesn’t know.

If there’s one thing that confounds advocates of so-called “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM), it’s the placebo effect. That’s because, whenever most such remedies are studied using rigorous clinical trial design using properly constituted placebo controls, they almost always end up showing effects no greater than placebo effects. That’s the main reason why they frequently […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

On the magical prevention of pancreatic cancer

I don’t know how I missed this article. I really don’t. It’s over a week old, and it’s exactly the sort of irritating cancer quackery that normally draws me irresistibly to it to slather it in a heapin’ helpin’ of not-so-Respectful Insolence. After all, being a cancer surgeon and all, I really, really hate cancer […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Humor Medicine Skepticism/critical thinking

Pulling reflexology out of one’s nether regions

I can’t think of a better way to start year seven on the ol’ blog. Remember how I speculated that perhaps Age of Autism or NaturalNews.com would provide me with the first topic of my next year of blogging? It turns out that I was wrong. It didn’t come from either of those sources, although […]