Year: 2009
Another new blogger for SBM
I’m pleased to announce that I’ve found another blogger for SBM, someone who will represent a viewpoint that I think is very important: That of the physician-in-training. So please welcome Tim Kreider to the stable. Tim is an MD/PhD student at a public university in the northeast US. He never paid much mind to pseudoscience until discovering The Skeptics’ Guide to the...
A Medical-Skeptical Classic
The medical literature slowly becomes outdated. As a result there are not that many ‘classics’ in the field, since their content becomes less relevant. The medical aphorism is that 10 years after graduation from medical school, half of everything you learned will no longer be valid. The problem for medical students is trying to figure out which half of their curriculum is...
How To Get Physicians To Use The Same Science-Based Playbook
Pretty much everyone agrees that we need to improve the quality of healthcare delivered to patients in the US. We’ve all heard the frightening statistics from the Institute of Medicine about medical error rates – that as many as 98,000 patients die each year as a result of them – and we also know that the US spends about 33% more than...
Train Your Brain
I’m a big fan of video games, puzzles, and brain teasers. So the notion that so-called “brain training” games can help improve mental function and stave off dementia has some appeal to me. It also makes a certain amount of sense – exercise your brain and its function will improve. And yet, as a skeptic, I have always been bothered by the...
Healing But Not Curing
Last week I discussed the book Healing, Hype, or Harm? edited by Edzard Ernst. I was particularly struck by one of the essays in that book: “Healing but not Curing” by Bruce Charlton, MD, a reader in evolutionary psychiatry at the Department of Psychology of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. Charlton proposes a new way of looking at CAM. He describes...
2009: Shaping up to be a really bad year for antivaccinationists
I will begin this post with a bit of an explanation. Between one and two weeks ago, there appeared two momentous news about the manufactroversy regarding vaccines and autism. No doubt, many SBM readers were expecting that I, as the resident maven of this particular bit of pseudoscience, would have been here last week to give you, our readers, the skinny on...
Colorado is Nearer to Promoting Naturopathic Pseudomedicine—Aided by the Colorado Medical Society
This week we’ll take a break from lambasting the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, as worthy as that task is, in order to confront some of the latest events involving the pseudomedical cult that calls itself “naturopathic medicine.”* Intrepid nurse and anti-healthfraud activist Linda Rosa reports that Colorado is dangerously close to becoming the next state to endorse “NDs” as health...
Fakin’ it
Last week the Times of London revealed inside information from the General Medical Council (UK, responsible for physician licensing) of an ongoing investigation of Dr. Andrew Wakefield and from its own investigation. This revelation recalled other instances of fakery from reports of sectarian medicine (“CAM”) successes. The Medical Council information contained evidence that the data from the now famous Wakefield cases used to...
Comparative Clinical Effectiveness Research: Good News In Shades Of Gray
When I first heard about the new emphasis on comparative clinical effectiveness research (CCER) in Obama’s economic stimulus bill I thought, “Thank goodness! Maybe now science will truly regain its rightful place and we’ll end the CAM, ‘me-too’ drug, and excessive-use-of-technology madness that is wasting so much money in healthcare.” In fact, I was so excited about the new administration’s apparent interest...
Obama and Stem Cells
In 2001 George Bush signed an executive order banning federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, except for those lines that were already established. As a result such research ground to a halt in the US. While the order was presented as a compromise, the effect was chilling in its application. No researcher receiving federal dollars (even for a separate project) could...