Why People Continue to use SCAMs
I remain curious as to why people use, and continue to use, useless pseudo-medicines. I read the literature, but I find the papers unsatisfactory. They seem incomplete, and I suspect there are as many reasons people choose a pseudo-medicine as those use them. There are numerous surveys on what SCAMs people use. Designing and offering these surveys to every possible medical condition...
The Truth?
Summertime and the living is easy. I am in Sunriver, Oregon for the week and I though, hilariously, that I would have plenty of time to write a post. Between the hiking, the biking, the golf, the food and the beer, there has been little time to sit in from of a keyboard. There may be no better place to spend a...
TCM Hodgepodge
I suspect there is more published about traditional Chinese medicine than any other SCAM. Here are some of the recent curiosities of TCM. Burning genitals The little girls laughed about the germs, because they didn’t believe in them; but they believed about the disease, because they’d seen that happen. Spirits caused it, everyone knew that. Spirits and bad luck. Jack had not...
Astrology, Alchemy, ESP and Reiki. One Of These Is Not Like The Other
I knew that Jann was thinking of writing about reiki and fraud, but did not know the details of her most excellent discussion from yesterday until I had finished my penultimate draft for today. Think of them as a match set, two perspectives on the same elephant. Fraud: a person or thing intended to deceive others, typically by unjustifiably claiming or being...
More Dialogs
There is no alternative medicine. There is only scientifically proven, evidence-based medicine supported by solid data or unproven medicine, for which scientific evidence is lacking. JAMA Just just because there are flaws in aircraft design that doesn’t mean flying carpets exist. Ben Goldacre Wiser heads than I have commented on “Invitation to a Dialogue: Alternative Therapies” in The New York Times. So...
Cochrane Reviews: The Food Babe of Medicine?
There are two topics about which I know a fair amount. The first is Infectious Disease. I am expert in ID, Board Certified and certified bored, by the ABIM. The other, although to a lesser extent, is SCAMs. When I read the literature on these topics, I do so with extensive knowledge and, in the case of ID, 30 years of clinical...
Moxibustion
Moxibustion is the burning of mugwort close to, or sometimes into, the skin. Does it work? No. Why do people use it? Because it's old.
Hickey: On Cupping.
Always start with an excuse. I have been ill for the last 10 days. I suspect I picked up an infection from the woman I slept with in Vegas.* I normally go through the day at warp 5 (I do not want to destroy space-time), but this illness has reduced my mental functioning in the evening to one-half impulse at best, with...
Agnotology: The Study of Ignorance
A comment from the blog: Every single time – bar none – I have had a conversation with someone about CAM and its modalities, they are absolutely astonished when I explain to them what the modality really is. One story I love telling comes from my friend in the year behind me. His parents are professional chemists and he came home one...
Acupuncture Vignettes
I seem to be writing a lot about acupuncture of late. As perhaps the most popular pseudo-medicine, there seems to be more published on the topic. I have a lot of internet searches set up to automatically feed me new information on various SCAMs. Interestingly, all the chiropractic updates seem to be published on chiropractic economics sites, not from scientific sources. Go...