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Complementary and alternative medicine Politics Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

The director and deputy director of NCCAM pontificate about “scientific plausibility”

One of the overarching issues, if not the overarching issue that makes so-called “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM)—or, as it’s now more commonly called, “integrative medicine”—so problematic is prior plausibility. It’s also one of the most difficult to explain to the lay public, because to someone not trained in science it can sound like not […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics

Oh, goody. NCCAM has a blog.

Oh, goody. I don’t know how I’ve missed this, given that it’s been in existence now for over a month now, but I have. Regular readers (and even fairly recent readers, given that I write about this topic relatively frequently) know that I’m not a big fan of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Quackery

Senator Tom Harkin: NCCAM has “fallen short” because it hasn’t validated enough woo

Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) owes me a new irony meter. I’ll explain in a minute, but first you have to know why I even give a rodent’s posterior about Harkin. As you may recall, no single legislator in the U.S. has done more to damage the cause of science- and evidence-based medicine than Tom Harkin. […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Quackery

The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM): Your Tax Dollars at Work

What’s an advocate of evidence- and science-based medicine to think about the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, better known by its abbrevation NCCAM? As I’ve pointed out before, I used to be somewhat of a supporter of NCCAM. I really did, back when I was more naïve and idealistic. Indeed, as I mentioned […]