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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Medicine

Vaccine exemptions in California threaten herd immunity

I don’t know if it’s confirmation bias, faulty memory, or if my individual impression is correct, but it seems to me that over the years I’ve been blogging that stories like this one seem to be becoming depressingly more common: Getting inoculated for diseases such as whooping cough and measles used to be a childhood […]

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Medicine

Some excellent questions for medical reporters

Having taken note of my little missive yesterday about New York Times health reporter Tara Parker-Pope and her utter credulity towards the woo that is acupuncture, Dr. R. W. makes an observation: A number of years ago I ran across Science Education in Preparation for the Ministry. The premise of the document, written by pathologist […]

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Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

Tara Parker-Pope and the New York Times Well Blog: Acupuncture woo takes over

What the hell is going on with The New York Times‘ health reporting? I’ve had my share of disagreements with the way that the NYT has covered various health issues over the years that I’ve been blogging, but I don’t recall ever having seen it embrace pseudoscience. I can recall being a bit miffed at […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

Tai chi for fibromyalgia in the NEJM: A triumph of the Trojan horse

I tell ya, I go away for a few days and something always seems to happen that I’d be all over if I were at home and blogging normally. Either something major happens in the anti-vaccine movement or there’s a new study being touted by woos or womthing else big happens. In the old days, […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

“Integrative oncology”: Quackademic medicine victorious?

One of the main topics that I’ve covered over the last four or five of laying down a swath of not-so-Respectful Insolence directed at pseudoscience is the relatively rapid, seemingly relentless infiltration of pseudoscience into what should be bastions of science-based medicine (SBM), namely medical schools and academic medical centers promoted by academics who should, […]