Science-Based Politics: Lyme, Zika, and the Green Party.
I don’t have much to write about this week. Yeah, yeah, I know. How is that different than the last 50 blog entries? And I will have even less to say next time. But nothing of real interest has crossed my screen the past two weeks, not that I have really been looking. One of my favorite stories as a kid was...
Acupuncture and Endorphins: Not all that Impressive
I was reading, and deconstructing, a particularly awful bit of advice for acupuncture by Consumer Reports. It was the same old same old, but it was the source that made it particularly awful. I expect more from Consumer Reports than the uncritical regurgitation of the standard mythical acupuncture narrative. The report included the quote One possible reason for the benefits of acupuncture:...
About Herbs: an app to avoid
Medicine has an intellectual hierarchy. Supposedly the best and the brightest are in the academic medical centers and are the thought leaders in their field. Those of us lower in the hierarchy are well aware of some of the warts present on our betters, but I would expect those at the top would adhere to the highest intellectual and ethical standards. People...
Chiropractic Moves into Transportation
I debated which of two topics to blog about this week that appeared in my feeds. The first was “Graduate slams CQU for offering ‘pseudoscience degree’,” where an Australian is upset that her University is offering an undergraduate Bachelor of Science in Chiropractic and a postgraduate Master of Clinical Chiropractic degree because chiropractic is “complete pseudoscience”. And the second was: “Foundation for...
Dry Needling
War, huh, yeah What is it good for Absolutely nothing Uh-huh huh War, huh, yeah What is it good for Absolutely nothing Say it again, y’all War, huh, What is it good for Absolutely nothing Listen to me Ohhh, war, I despise Cause it means destruction Of innocent lives War means tears To thousands of mothers eyes When their sons go to...
Vaginal Seeding. Ew. That’s nuts. Hmmm, interesting.
Sometimes a headline will cause me to run through a series of reactions in rapid sequence. For example “Mothers facing C-sections look to vaginal ‘seeding’ to boost their babies’ health”: Early studies show that swabbing a mother’s vagina and transferring it to her baby’s mouth, eyes and skin may stimulate microbiome development similarly to babies born naturally – and protect it from...
Join Us at NECSS 2016. One Week To Go
A day of Science-Based Medicine, a weekend of science and skepticism NECSS, the NorthEast Conference on Science and Skepticism, is this spring. Included in the program will be a full day of Science-Based Medicine. The NECSS will be held May 12th–15th, 2015, in New York City at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Full Conference schedule here. Description: NECSS welcomes over 400 attendees to...
Chiropractors, Blind Pigs, and Acorns
When people are at the end of their life they like to pass on their life lessons. One thing I have never had a patient say is “Doc, I sure wish I had spent more time at work.” I try and keep that in mind, but then there are those work commitments that are hard to avoid. I need to have a...
Chiropractic- Ignoring the Precautionary Principle Since 1895
Bleh. I turned from a short trip to the city of angles with a bad man cold that just isn’t going away. Those who do primary care all tell me that whatever is going around lasts 2-3 weeks. Great. I am not sick enough to get out of work but I am not well enough to have any enthusiasm to do anything....
The New Chiropractic. And I thought SBM had an uphill battle.
Over at the Society for Science-Based Medicine we have Sisyphus as the logo on the website. Sisyphus, as you may know, is the Greek who had to push a boulder up a hill every day, the archetypal metaphor for futile labor. It was meant to be a bit tongue in cheek, but only a bit. As quackademia proudly expands I sometime feel...