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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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Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Medicine

Woo: The future of American medicine? (revisited)

As a blogger, every so often I come across a link, file it away, and then when I look through my link collection looking for topics to blog about I rediscover the link but totally forget where I got it from. This is just one of these times. However, since it’s less than three weeks […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Entertainment/culture Medicine Quackery Television

Dr. Oz defiantly embraces The Dark Side

Stick a fork in Dr. Oz. He’s done. I know I’ve been highly critical of Dr. Mehmet Oz, Vice Chair of the Department of Surgery at Columbia University and medical director of the Integrative Medicine Program (i.e., Columbia’s quackademic medicine) program at New York-Presbyterian Hospital. Those are his academic titles. More important, in terms of […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

The “integration” of pseudoscience into medicine continues apace

Beginning not long after this blog began, one recurring theme has been the infiltration of “quackademic medicine” into academic medical centers. Whether it be called “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM) or “integrative medicine” (IM), its infiltration into various academic medical centers has been one of the more alarming developments I’ve noted over the last several […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Quackademic medicine at UCSF: The Osher Center for Integrative Medicine gets a new $37 million building

$37 million. If you were a medical school dean or a hospital administrator and had $37 million for a project, how woud you use it? What would you build? What would you renovate? What research projects would you fund? What infrastructure improvements would you make? Yes, $37 million is a lot of green. Back at […]