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

A Cleveland Clinic doctor’s antivaccine rant: Facilitated by a culture of pseudoscience and published with the knowledge of the Clinic’s communications office

The fallout from the social media firestorm from the antivaccine rant written by the Medical Director of the Cleveland Clinic Wellness Institute and published by Cleveland.com last Friday has abated but far from faded away. The offending physician, Dr. Daniel Neides, was forced to issue an apology, which was one of the least convincing apologies […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine News of the Weird Popular culture Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Antivaccine pseudoscience at The Cleveland Clinic: That’s what happens when you allow magical thinking to take hold

Over the weekend, a most unusual social media firestorm erupted in response to a blog post by Daniel Neides, MD, MBA, Acting Medical Director of the Tanya I. Edwards Center for Integrative Medicine, Vice Chair and Chief Operating Officer of Cleveland Clinic Wellness, as well as the Associate Director of Clinical Education for The Cleveland […]

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Medicine Quackery

Medscape enables functional medicine quackery

It’s no secret that I’m not exactly a fan of Dr. Mark Hyman he of the “Ultrawellness” medical empire and arguably the foremost promoter of the “subspecialty” (if you will) of “integrative medicine” known as functional medicine. Integrative medicine, as I’ve told you time and time again, is a specialty dedicated to “integrating” alternative medicine […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Popular culture Pseudoscience Quackery Science Skepticism/critical thinking Tales from the helicopter

The Cleveland Clinic: Promoting dubious diet advice on Twitter and beyond

I’ve mentioned on quite a few occasions that there’s a quote attributed to philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer that is much beloved of cranks: All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident. I also like to point out that Schopenhauer probably never said […]

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Medicine

My last word (I hope): Michael Phelps, cupping, and "integrative medicine"

As I mentioned yesterday, there are news events involving medicine (more specifically pseudoscience in medicine) that are so ubiquitous and irritating that they’re enough to bring me briefly out of my vacation to bang out a quick post. So it was when I wrote my post yesterday about Michael Phelps’ enthusiasm for cupping, a practice […]