Categories
Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Medicine Quackery

Revisiting the question of “individualization” of treatments in “alternative” medicine

I kind of miss Peter Lipson on ScienceBlogs and wish he were still around. I realize it’s been nearly a year and a half since he departed, but it’s been a bit lonely here being the only physician blogging about quackery, the role of science in medicine, and other skeptical topics related to medicine. This […]

Categories
Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Fighting the “acid” of negative (e)motions?

If there’s one quack who both amuses and appalls me at the same time, it’s Robert O. Young. You remember Robert O. Young, don’t you? He’s the guy who thinks that all disease is caused by excess acid. I’ve written about him quite a few times over the last several years. For instance, he amused […]

Categories
Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

Patient satisfaction versus quality of care, round two

About a month ago, I wrote about a study that looked at metrics of patient satisfaction and compared them to hard outcomes often used to evaluate quality of care, including frequency of emergency room usage, frequency of hospitalization, and overall mortality. Even though these days there appears to be an implicit assumption that increased patient […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Quackery

The infiltration of woo into mainstream academic medicine: The media notices

Along with Dr. R.W. and few others, I’ve made a bit of a name for myself in the medical blogosphere by bemoaning the infiltration of non-science- and non-evidence-based medicine into academia. It’s not a particularly popular viewpoint. The prevailing attitude seems to be: Why be so negative? It’s all good. Moreover, with a credulous media […]

Categories
Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Alternative medicine: Changing the rules after the game has started

Damn Steve Novella. Well, not really, but I always get annoyed when someone comes up with an analogy or description of a phenomenon that I should have thought of first. I don’t really get annoyed at the person who came up with such ideas, but rather at myself for not thinking of something so obvious […]