Categories
Bad science Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery

An NCCIH survey on “complementary” health approaches

The NCCIH recently published a study examining the percentage of US physicians who had recommended “complementary health approaches” to their patients in the last year. The percentages are far higher than they should be.

Categories
Biology Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Integrative medicine Pseudoscience Quackery

Fabrizio Benedetti asks: “Does placebo research boost pseudoscience?”

Professor Fabrizio Benedetti is the most famous and almost certainly also the most influential researcher investigating the physiology of placebo effects. In a recent commentary, he asks whether placebo research is fueling quackery, as quacks co-opt its results. The answer to that question is certainly yes. A better question is: How do supporters of science counter the placebo narrative promoted by quacks, in which placebos represent the “power of the mind to heal the body”?

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

A bait-and-switch study of acupuncture in stable chronic angina

This week, JAMA Internal Medicine published a clinical trial purporting to find that acupuncture helps stable angina. Here’s a hint: It doesn’t. It’s a bait-and-switch study that used “electroacupuncture” instead of acupuncture with poor blinding and lack of consideration of prior plausibility.

Categories
Complementary and alternative medicine Integrative medicine Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery

Thomas Jefferson University goes full quack with a department of “integrative medicine”

Quackademic medicine takes a big leap forward at Thomas Jefferson University with its new Department of Integrative Medicine and Nutritional Sciences.

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

The Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center shows us how to write a press release on integrative oncology

Last week, the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center issued a press releast touting its integrative oncology program. It’s a perfect example to demonstrate the formulaic nature of such press releases and the distortions behind them used to sell the “integration” of quackery into medicine.