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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy

“Believe in facts”? You keep using that phrase. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Vaccine scientist and advocate Dr. Paul Offit recently published a book on the pseudoscience of alternative medicine. Not surprisingly, the antivaccine cranks at Age of Autism, led by Anne Rachel, don’t like that.

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Sweet and alkaline won’t win the war against cancer

I write about cancer quackery a lot, and I’ve been at it for over a decade. I first cut my teeth on Usenet, delving into that cesspit of unreason known as misc.health. alternative, where my eyes were opened to just the sorts of pseudoscientific and unscientific cancer treatments patients are enticed into trying, sometimes in […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Naturopathy Quackery

Do you believe in magic in medicine?

Sometimes, between blogging, a demanding day (and night) job doing surgery and science, and everything else, I embarrass myself. Sure, sometimes I embarrass myself by saying something that, in retrospect, I wish I hadn’t. More often, I embarrass myself by letting things slide that I shouldn’t. For instance, when friends send me a prepublication copy […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Quackery

“Autism biomed” and the murder of Alex Spourdalakis

Sometimes, in the course of blogging, I come across a story that I don’t know what to make of. Sometimes, it’s a quack or a crank taking a seemingly science-based position. Sometimes it’s something out of the ordinary. Other times, it’s a story that’s just weird, such that I strongly suspect that something else is […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Alternative medicine: The bait and switch is working

For a long time, going back almost to the beginning of this blog eight and a half years ago, I’ve referred to the “bait and switch” of alternative medicine. What I mean by that is the manner in which advocates of alternative medicine—or, as they like to call it these days, “complementary and alternative medicine” […]