Infomercial in PLOS One links to website selling unproven treatments for fibromyalgia and dementia
PLOS One recently published a clinical trial that was essentially a poorly-disguised advertisement for an unproven product. I object to this use of the scientific literature to market such a device.
Soothing Your Heart: Does practicing self-compassion have physical and mental health benefits?
Does a recent study demonstrate that being kind to yourself has benefits for your mental and physical health?
Debunking the magical power of the placebo effect for chronic pain (yet again)
The opioid crisis and growing awareness of the dangers of addiction to pain medication are prompting renewed calls for the use of pill placebos in place of active treatments, backed by familiar claims about the magical powers of the placebo.
Skeptic’s Guide to Debunking Claims about Telomeres in the Scientific and Pseudoscientific Literature
The New Year starts with telomeres as the trendiest of trendy biomarkers. As seen in Time, telomeres are the means to monitor our well-being so we can protect ourselves from all sorts from threats, including early death. A skeptic needs to do considerable homework in order to muster the evidence needed to counter the latest exaggerated, premature, and outright pseudoscientific claims about...
Eminent Harvard psychologist, mother of positive psychology, New Age quack?
Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas. – Marie Curie’s advice to journalists Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer was on CBS This Morning News explaining plans for a psychosocial intervention study with women with Stage IV metastatic breast cancer. The project would attempt to shrink women’s tumors by shifting their mental perspective back to before they were diagnosed. Seeing her...
A formal request for retraction of a Cancer article
I am formally requesting that Cancer retract an article claiming that psychotherapy delays recurrence and extends survival time for breast cancer patients. Regardless of whether I succeed in getting a retraction, I hope I will prompt other efforts to retract such articles. My letter appears later in this post. In seeking retraction, I cite the standards of the Committee on Publication Ethics...
“Postnatal depression blood test breakthrough” or Churnalism?
“Postnatal depression blood test breakthrough” proclaimed the headline. The UK Guardian article then declared: British doctors reveal ‘extremely important’ research that could help tens of thousands of women at risk. Here it comes. Readers were going to be fed a press release generated by the study’s authors and forwarded undigested by the media but disguised as writings of a journalist. If only...
Is acupuncture as effective as antidepressants? Part 2. Blinding readers who try to get an answer
This is the second blog post about a recent PLOS One review claiming that alternative therapies such as acupuncture are as effective as antidepressants and psychotherapy for depression. The article gives a message to depressed consumers that they should consider alternative therapies as a treatment option because they are just as effective as conventional treatments. It gives promoters of alternative therapies a...
Systematic Review claims acupuncture as effective as antidepressants: Part 1: Checking the past literature
A recent systematic review in PLOS One raised the question whether acupuncture and other alternative therapies are as effective as antidepressants and psychotherapy for depression. The authors concluded differences were not seen with psychotherapy compared to antidepressants, alternative therapies [and notably acupuncture] or active intervention controls or put it differently, antidepressants alone and psychotherapy alone are not significantly different from alternative therapies...
Journal of Clinical Oncology editorial: “Compelling” evidence acupuncture “may be” effective for cancer related fatigue
Journal of Clinical Oncology (JCO) is a high impact journal (JIF > 16) that advertises itself as a “must read” for oncologists. Some cutting edge RCTs evaluating chemo and hormonal therapies have appeared there. But a past blog post gave dramatic examples of pseudoscience and plain nonsense to be found in JCO concerning psychoneuroimmunology (PNI) and, increasingly, integrative medicine and even integrations...