Categories
Complementary and alternative medicine Humor Medicine Quackery

If “alternative” medicine is okay, why not “alternative” cleaning?

With all the woo infiltrating hospitals these days, as I’ve lamented about in constructing my Academic Woo Aggregator, it was only a matter of time until these ways of thinking started to infiltrate other lines of work. Why not “alternative janitorial services” as well? After reading about it, I wonder how long before it spreads […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Quackery

NCCAM: Your tax dollars hard at work funding woo

I used to be somewhat of a supporter of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM). I really did. This was back when I was more naïve and idealistic. Indeed, when I first read Wally Sampson’s article Why NCCAM should be defunded, I thought it a bit too strident and even rather close-minded. […]

Categories
Bioethics Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Skepticism/critical thinking

Quackademic medicine in the U.S.: The view from the U.K.

David Colquhoun, eminent scientist and maintainer of the excellent blog DC’s Improbable Science, has recently returned home to the U.K. after a trip across the pond to the U.S. and Canada, where, among other things, he gave a lecture at the University of Toronto, as well as the Riker Memorial Lecture at the Oregon Health […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Selling homeopathy to pediatricians

I’ve never been able to figure out how anyone who claims to be devoted to science and scientific medicine can take homeopathy the least bit seriously. None of it makes any sense scientifically. Its basic principal of the “Law of Similars” has far more basis in the concepts of sympathetic magic than anything that science […]

Categories
Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

Finally, NCCAM actually funds some worthwhile research!

I thought I might start developing chest pain when I read it, but to my shock NCCAM has actually funded some worthwhile research! Even more amazingly, NCCAM described it in a press release! Too bad it supports the contention that acupuncture is nothing more than placebo and that the attention given by the practitioner is […]