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

Bill and Hillary Clinton embrace the quackery that is functional medicine

This might look somewhat familiar to people, but I have a good excuse. Yesterday was Easter, and, although by no stretch of the imagination can I be accused of being particularly religious, we still did have family to visit. Add to that the fact that I have a two talks to give today that as […]

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Bioethics Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking Sports

When false hope leads well-meaning people astray

One of the frequent topics on this blog is, unsurprisingly, cancer quackery. Be it the Gerson therapy and its propensity for encouraging patients to take hundreds of supplements and to shoot copious amounts of coffee where it really doesn’t belong (where the sun don’t shine), the Gonzalez protocol, homeopathy, naturopathy, or various other nonsensical and […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Quackery

Mike Adams endorses the antivaccine Canary Party. I almost feel sorry for them.

Does anybody remember the Canary Party? As I described two and a half years ago when I first became aware of it, the Canary Party is a weird mutant hybrid of antivaccinationists convinced that there are “toxins” in vaccines that are making all our children autistic, “health freedom” activists, and, more recently, Tea Party activists. […]

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Cancer Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

It’s 2014, and Stanislaw Burzynski has begun his counteroffensive

Well, that didn’t take long. I knew it had been too quiet on the Burzynski front. In retrospect, that was almost certainly because of the holidays, but the holidays are over, and real life is here again. Yes, the year 2014 is only a little more than a week old, and here comes Stanislaw Burzynski […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking Television

Dr. Oz versus science—again

That Dr. Mehmet Oz uses his show to promote quackery of the vilest sort is no longer in any doubt. I was reminded yet again of this last week when I caught a rerun of one of his shows from earlier this season, when he gazed in wonder at the tired old cold reading schtick […]