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Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery

The most famous sufferer from Nobel Disease has died

Luc Montagnier has died. He was the Nobel laureate whose descent into pseudoscience and conspiracies led me to coin the term “Nobel disease.” His final conspiracy theory before his death was to claim that COVID-19 vaccines cause AIDS.

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Bad science Medicine Naturopathy Pseudoscience Quackery

Chronic Lyme disease: Fake diagnosis or pseudo-diagnosis, NOT fake disease

For once, Twitter actually changed Orac’s mind. Chronic Lyme disease is not a fake disease. Rather, it is a fake diagnosis or pseudodiagnosis disconnected from what is really going on physiologically. That’s why only quacks use the diagnosis.

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Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Integrative medicine Medicine Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Patient satisfaction ≠ quality, round ∞

From the viewpoint of hospital administration, patient satisfaction is increasingly the be-all and end-all of how doctors are evaluated, and it is assumed that patient satisfaction is highly correlated with quality of care. Unfortunately, patient satisfaction ≠ quality. A new study shows this very phenomenon in an outpatient setting.

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Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Medicine Naturopathy Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Deaths and complications due to treating the fake disease known as “chronic Lyme disease”

Alternative practitioners invent and treat fake diseases like adrenal fatigue and chronic Lyme disease. Unfortunately, as a recent CDC report on complications due to treating chronic Lyme disease with long term antibiotics shows, treating fake diseases can cause harm and, in some cases, even kill.

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Kris Kristofferson: The latest celebrity quackery victim

If you grew up, as I did, a child of the 1970s in the US (I graduated from high school in 1980), you probably couldn’t escape the influence of Kris Kristofferson. He was big, and he was at his biggest during the 1970s, pumping out country music and mainstream hits, appearing in movies, and generally […]