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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Religion Skepticism/critical thinking

CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta: Falling for faith healing quackery

Christmas is over. Heck even Boxing Day is over. Still, Orac is doing something very unusual for him in that he’s taking a bit of a staycation at home. Consider it a sanity break. Even though I’ll be working on grants and a variety of other projects at home and even though I haven’t signed […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

I love the smell of irony in the morning. It smells like…schadenfreude

This being Christmas Eve and all, I hadn’t planned on blogging. However, sometimes things happen that demand a change in plans. Consequently, although I don’t plan on doing one of my usual logorrheic treatments of this issue, I do plan on mentioning something, because sometimes schadenfreude is a most excellent Christmas gift. Remember Dr. Rolando […]

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Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Skepticism/critical thinking

More dubious statements about placebo effects

In discussing “alternative” medicine it’s impossible not to discuss, at least briefly, placebo effects. Indeed, one of the most common complaints I (and others) voice about clinical trials of alternative medicine is lack of adequate placebo controls. Just type “acupuncture” in the search box in the upper left hand corner of the blog, and you’ll […]

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Personal Science Skepticism/critical thinking

The Orac Christmas tree

My readers might not think that a Plexiglass box full of blinking colored lights cum most advanced computer in the galaxy would go to the trouble of celebrating Christmas, much less putting up an actual Christmas tree. Well, actually, he didn’t. His wife did. But, then, Orac is a Plexiglass box of blinking colored lights. […]

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Intelligent design/creationism Pseudoscience Skepticism/critical thinking

This guy is a veritable modern Copernicus by press release

After you’ve been blogging as long as I have, you inevitably wind up on a lot of mailing lists. Publicity companies, for instance, long ago discovered that getting a buzz going in the blogosphere is every bit as important as trying to get coverage from the “traditional” media. If you’re as fortunate as I’ve been […]