Categories
Biology Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Supplements: Not mystical anticancer magic

It’s no secret that over the years I’ve been very critical of a law passed nearly 20 years ago, commonly referred to as the DSHEA of 1994. The abbreviation DSHEA stands for about as Orwellian a name for a law as I can imagine: the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act. Of course, as we’ve […]

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Computers and social media Humor

The Antivaccine Ten Commandments

Although I’m interested in skepticism in general, I have a tendency to gravitate towards one particular form of pseudoscience (alternative medicine) and, in particular, a certain kind of that particular form of pseudoscience, namely antivaccine quackery. However, as much as I keep returning to the antivaccine movement, I keep noticing just how much it shares […]

Categories
Complementary and alternative medicine Popular culture Quackery Television

NBC chief medical correspondent Dr. Nancy Snyderman embraces quackery

I take back all those nice things I used to say about Nancy Snyderman. There’s no doubt that she “gets it” about vaccines and, for the most part, even though she does occasionally go overboard, and her understanding of the issues involved in the use of various vaccines is anything but nuanced. I used to […]

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Quackery

And now death by Gardasil? Again, not so fast…

I guess this is in effect part two of yesterday’s post. Regular daily readers (and you are a regular daily reader, aren’t you?) will remember that yesterday I commented on the recent uptick in anti-Gardasil vaccine rhetoric coming from the antivaccine crank blog Age of Autism and other sources, in the process deconstructing speculation masquerading […]

Categories
Cancer Clinical trials Popular culture

In which Joe Jackson’s wisdom about cancer is apparently not validated

Everything Everything gives you cancer Everything Everything gives you cancer There’s no cure, there’s no answer Everything gives you cancer – Joe Jackson I don’t write about nutrition as much as other topics because I’m not as knowledgeable about it as I am about, say, cancer, vaccines, and what constitutes good medical evidence. (I am, […]