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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Antivaccinationists promote a bogus internet “survey.” Hilarity ensues as it’s retracted.

I don’t have many “rules” per se about blogging, but one informal rule that I do live by is that I never blog about a study if all I can access is the abstract. In general, I insist on having the complete study before I will blog it, because to me the abstract isn’t enough. […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Computers and social media Medicine Popular culture Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Mystery solved: Chiropractic manipulation of the neck did cause Katie May’s death from stroke

Eight months ago, I asked the question: Did chiropractic manipulation of her neck cause Katie May’s stroke? Now, it appears, I know the answer, and the answer is yes: Katie May, a model who posed for Playboy and gained a massive following on Snapchat, suffered a “catastrophic” stroke in early February and later died after […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Medicine Naturopathy Politics Quackery Science Skepticism/critical thinking

The RAND Corporation: Supporting the “integration” of quackery with real medicine since 2008

As regular readers of this blog and related blogs know, over the last two or three decades there has been a successful effort to legitimize quackery in the form of what is now called “integrative medicine.” Three decades ago, modalities like homeopathy, acupuncture, much of traditional Chinese medicine, reflexology, chiropractic, and many other modalities based […]

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Biology Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Science

Did chiropractic manipulation of her neck cause Katie May’s stroke?

Katie May was a model, and by all accounts a very successful one, having appeared in Playboy, Sports Illustrated, and other magazines and websites. Self-proclaimed the “Queen of Snapchat,” she also had nearly two million Instagram followers and was a major social media force, having recently parlayed her modeling and social media career into becoming […]

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Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Popular culture Quackery Science

Health disparities research and the mainstreaming of "integrative medicine"

The overarching goal that proponents of so-called “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM) or, as is becoming the preferred term, “integrative” medicine is the mainstreaming of the “unconventional” treatments that fall under the rubric of these two terms. Indeed, that’s the very reason why they so insisted on the shift from calling it CAM to calling […]