Category: Critical Thinking
Spinal Manipulation and the JAMA Meta-Analysis: An Analysis of Fuel.
Association of Spinal Manipulative Therapy With Clinical Benefit and Harm for Acute Low Back Pain: Systematic Review and Meta-analysis. It is even worse than I thought it would be.
Corrigendum. The Week in Review for 04/23/2017
Protection from vampires. An autistic muppet upsets anti-vaxers. Naturopaths want insurance money. Big Chiro: what THEY don't want you to know. This blog is futile. And more.
Vitamin C and Sepsis. All Sound and Fury? Much Ado About Nothing?
Is intravenous vitamin C helpful in sepsis? I hope so, but past experience render me skeptical.
Is the ACCME cracking down on quackery in continuing medical education (CME) offerings? Richard Jaffe thinks so.
Richard Jaffe, a lawyer who has made a career out of defending quacks like Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski, thinks that the ACCME, the main accrediting body for continuing medical education (CME) credits, is cracking down on "complementary and alternative medicine" CME courses. That would be a very good thing indeed, but is it really happening? More importantly, would it be enough?
Corrigendum. The week in review for 03/12/2017
Waiting for a vaccine-preventable infection. More lousy acupuncture studies. Medical students interested in homeopathy are not as strong at science. Water wet. TCPM consuming donkeys. What the FDA does, and doesn't do, for now.
Prove the scientific consensus and win a prize: A time-dishonored PR ploy used by cranks, quacks, and pseudoscientists (Robert F. Kennedy Jr. edition)
Last week, antivaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. teamed up with Robert De Niro to issue a challenge to provide one scientific study that proves thimerosal in vaccines is safe, with a cash prize of $100,000. They thus joined a long line of antivaxers, creationists, and climate science denialists offering money to "prove" the scientific consensus. Science doesn't work that way.
Acupuncture’s Big Myth
The great acupuncture myth? No spoilers from me. Read the entry or skip to the penultimate paragraph to find out.
Milestones on the path to integrating quackery with medicine
The "integration" of quackery with real medicine occurring in academia and now private hospitals and practices didn't occur overnight. It began decades ago. Here, we examine what an advocate of "integrative medicine" views as key milestones on the path towards adding pseudoscience and quackery to your medicine.
“Donald Trump’s presidential election win stuns scientists”
Scientists in the U.S. and from around the world are weighing in on Donald Trump’s election as the next president of the most powerful country on earth: Trump will be the first anti-science president we have ever had . . . The consequences are going to be very, very severe. Michael Lubell, director of public affairs for the American Physical Society in...
Spinal Manipulation for Back and Neck Pain: Does It Work? Annotated.
Spinal Manipulation for Back and Neck Pain: Does It Work? You would think it does if you read the article but not if you actually read the literature.