Category: Critical Thinking

NY federal court hands triple loss to anti-vaccination ideology

The state of New York allows religious and medical (but not philosophical) exemptions from school vaccination mandates. New York City has a policy of excluding unvaccinated schoolchildren from classes when there is an outbreak of vaccine-preventable disease reported in a particular school. Two sets of parents whose children had religious exemptions sued New York City and the state in federal court when...

/ June 26, 2014

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...

/ May 16, 2014

The false dilemma of David Katz: Abandon patients or abandon science

Dr. David L. Katz is apparently unhappy with me. You remember Dr. Katz, don’t you? If you don’t, I’ll remind you momentarily. If you do, you won’t be surprised. Let me explain a bit first how Dr. Katz recently became aware of me again. Last week, I posted a short (for me) piece about something that disturbed both Steve Novella and myself,...

/ May 5, 2014

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...

/ May 2, 2014

How “they” view “us”

We skeptics like to view ourselves as the heroes, as the ones beating back the tide of pseudoscience and protecting the gullible from quacks. Unfortunately, the very victims whom we seek to save don't see it that way. To them, we are the villains, and they hate us. To all too many of them, almost any means are justifiable to combat us....

/ April 28, 2014

What Whole Foods Markets Doesn’t Tell You

Whole Foods Market is a relentlessly hip American supermarket chain which prides itself on organic fruits and vegetables, gluten-free just-about-everything, and high-end touches like wine bars and exotic take out items (roasted yucca, anyone?). The health products aisle is stocked with Bach Flower and homeopathic remedies. For example, in-house brand Flu Ease: “an established homeopathic formula that should be taken at the...

/ April 17, 2014

Amber Waves of Woo

As a pediatrician I have an opportunity to observe a wide variety of unusual and sometimes alarming parental efforts meant to help children through illness or keep them well. I have recently noticed one particular intervention that seems to be becoming more prevalent, at least in my practice. I’ve begun to see more and more infants sporting Baltic amber teething necklaces. These...

/ April 11, 2014

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...

/ March 21, 2014

How to Think

Robert Todd Carroll, the author of The Skeptic’s Dictionary, has a new book out: The Critical Thinker’s Dictionary: Biases, Fallacies, and Illusion and what you can do about them. Since some of our commenters and most of the CAM advocates we critique are constantly committing logical fallacies, a survey of logical fallacies is a good idea both for us and for them,...

/ February 11, 2014

Food for Thought

I am excited to tell you about a wonderful new endeavor that is helping to promote critical thinking about science and medicine. It’s a free online course on “Food for Thought” that offers a scientific framework for understanding food and its impact on health and society from past to present. The “Food for Thought” course is a product of EdX, which offers...

/ February 4, 2014