The American Cancer Society’s new mammography guidelines: Déjà vu all over again
One of the things that feels the weirdest about having done the same job, having been in the same specialty, for a longer and longer time is that you frequently feel, as the late, great Yogi Berra would have put it, déjà vu all over again. This is particularly true in science and medicine, where the same issues come up again and...
Choosing Wisely: Changing medical practice is hard
One of the hardest things to do in medicine is to change practice in the face of scientific evidence that what you're doing isn't working. Quacks never change, but medicine does. The change might be slower and messier than we would like, but change does happen. Choosing Wisely is an initiative designed to bring about change by discouraging the use of interventions...
“Safe” dietary supplements can land you in the emergency room
If there’s one thing I’ve been consistent about, it’s that, however ridiculous all the other woo I routinely discuss here is—homeopathy, reiki, reflexology, I’m talking to you and your friends—herbal medicine and supplements might have value because they might have a physiological effect that is beneficial in treating or preventing disease. Of course, if that’s the case, it’s because the herb or...
Sarah Hershberger: “Health freedom” and parental rights vs. child welfare
One of the more depressing topics that I regularly write about on this blog includes of analyses of news stories of children with cancer whose parents decided to stop science-based treatment (usually the chemotherapy) and use quackery instead. There are, of course, variations on this theme, but these stories take form that generally resembles this outline: A child is diagnosed with a...
Presidential candidate Ben Carson: Shilling for Mannatech with his very own alternative cancer cure testimonial?
Over the years, mainly at my not-so-super-secret other blog, I’ve frequently made the points that the vast majority of physicians are not scientists and, in fact, that many of them suffer from a severe case of Dunning-Kruger when it comes to science outside of biomedical sciences—or even biomedical sciences outside of their medical field of expertise. The most common science I’ve seen...
Antivaccine activists fund a study to show vaccines cause autism. It backfires spectacularly.
Having written about pseudoscience and quackery continuously for over a decade and having engaged in conversations about it online for over 15 years, I’ve come to recognize a number of traits that are virtually the sine qua non of quacks and pseudoscientists and their believers. Obviously, one of them is a severe case of the Dunning-Kruger effect, a tendency of those with...
“Liquid biopsies” for cancer screening: Life-saving tests, or overdiagnosis and overtreatment taken to a new level?
I’ve written many times about how the relationship between the early detection of cancer and decreased mortality from cancer is not nearly as straightforward as the average person—even the average doctor—thinks, the first time being in the very first year of this blog’s existence. Since then, the complexities and overpromising of various screening modalities designed to detect disease at an early, asymptomatic...
Donald Trump and the dangerous vaccine politics of the 2016 Presidential race
At the second Republican debate of the 2016 election cycle, Donald Trump parroted antivaccine pseudoscience, and Ben Carson walked back his previously strong support for vaccine mandates. Earlier in the campaign, Rand Paul blamed vaccines for "neurologic injury," and Chris Christie briefly pandered by questioning vaccine mandates. What's going on here? Is the Republican Party becoming the antivaccine party?
The Federal Trade Commission takes on homeopathy—maybe
Well, I’m back. OK, returning from London isn’t nearly as epic as Sam Gamgee’s final words in The Lord of the Rings returning to his wife and daughter after having accompanied Frodo, Gandalf, Bilbo, and key elves of Middle-Earth to the Grey Havens, there to say goodbye to them as they boarded a ship to the undying lands. I just love the...