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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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Bad science Cancer Medicine Naturopathy Quackery

The quackademic avalanche: Is it too late for the pebbles to vote?

I’ve documented the infiltration of quackery into academic medicine through the “integration” of mystical and prescientific treatment modalities into medicine. Here, I look at a seemingly small incident, a veritable pebble in the quackademic avalanche. Is it too late for the pebbles to vote?

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Integrative medicine Medicine Quackery

ASCO: Endorsing the Society for Integrative Oncology’s “integration” of quackery into oncology

In 2014, the Society for Integrative Oncology first published clinical guidelines for the care of breast cancer patients. Not surprisingly, SIO advocated “integrating” dubious therapies with oncology. Last week, the most influential oncology society, the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), endorsed a 2017 update to the SIO guidelines, thus endorsing the “integration” of quackery with oncology and paving the way for insurance coverage. The advance of quackademic medicine in oncology continues apace.

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Complementary and alternative medicine Integrative medicine Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery

The Academic Consortium for Integrative Medicine and Health: Exaggerating the evidence for acupuncture to make it appear to be more than an elaborate placebo

The Academic Consortium for Integrative Medicine and Health is a group dedicated to promoting “integrative medicine” in medical academia that has, unfortunately, been very successful over the last two decades. Recently, it published a report that promotes acupuncture as a tool to combat the opioid epidemic Let’s just put it this way. The ACIMH exaggerates the evidence rather obviously.

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Popular culture Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

In which I am compared to Donald Trump by a pro-quackademic medicine activist

A little over a month ago, I wrote about how proponents of “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM), now more frequently called “integrative medicine,” go to great lengths to claim nonpharmacological treatments for, well, just about anything as somehow being CAM or “integrative.” The example I used was a systematic review article published by several of […]