Category: Energy Medicine
The regulation of nonsense
The most meticulous regulation of nonsense must still result in nonsense. — Edzard Ernst, M.D., PhD., professor, Complementary Medicine, Peninsula Medical School, University of Exeter, UK One necessity of licensing so-called “complementary and alternative,” or “CAM,” practitioners is to spell out exactly what is encompassed in the CAM scope of practice. This is unfortunate for the practitioners because it forces an exposé...
The “CAM” Consumer: Misled and Abused
There is a disturbing lack of protection for the consumer of “complementary and alternative” products and services. I can think of no other area of commerce where misleading, as well as out and out false, information is so regularly employed, without consequence, to entice the consumer into forking over his hard-earned cash. Nor do I know of any other manner of goods...
Dr. Oz revisited
We here at SBM have been very critical of Dr. Mehmet Oz, who through his relentless self-promotion (and with more than a little help from his patron Oprah Winfrey) has somehow become known as “America’s doctor.” Back in the early days, when he was the regular medical expert on The Oprah Winfrey Show, Dr. Oz was at least tolerable. Much of what...
Informed Consent and CAM: Truth Not Optional
In three recent posts, Drs. Novella, Gorski and Atwood took the Bravewell Collaborative to task over a report on its recent survey of U.S. “integrative medicine” centers. As Dr. Novella noted, So what is integrative medicine? When you strip away the rebranding and co-opting of features and treatments of mainstream medicine, you are left with the usual list of pseudoscientific practices that...
Killer Tomatoes and Poisonous Potatoes?
Remember the movie “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes”? That was fiction, but some alarmists would have us believe that the tomatoes and potatoes on our plates are really out to get us. I recently got an e-mail inquiry from an MD who said he had read that solanine in tomatoes, potatoes, and eggplants could be responsible for essential hypertension and a number...
Applied Kinesiology: Nonsense on Full Automatic
I start these entries about a week before their due date, and when I saw Dr Hall’s Applied Kinesiology (AK) post from Tuesday, I thought the heck, there goes my post for Friday. After reading Harriet’s post, I think mine will be both complementary and alternative, and perhaps even integrative, to her entry. I do have one quibble with her post. She...
Applied Kinesiology by Any Other Name…
Arm wrestling is not a good way to confirm a diagnosis. But it is a great way to elicit confirmation bias.
Does thinking make it so? CAM placebo fantasy versus scientific reality
Last week, I discussed a rather execrable study. Actually, the study itself wasn’t so execrable, at least not in its design, which was a fairly straightforward three-arm randomized clinical trial. Rather it was the interpretation of the study’s results that was execrable. In brief, the authors tested an “energy healing” modality known as “energy chelation” versus a placebo (sham “energy chelation”) and...
What is Science?
Consider these statements: …there is an evidence base for biofield therapies. (citing the Cochrane Review of Touch Therapies) The larger issue is what constitutes “pseudoscience” and what information is worthy of dissemination to the public. Should the data from our well conducted, rigorous, randomized controlled trial [of ‘biofield healing’] be dismissed because the mechanisms are unknown or because some scientists do not...
Adventures in defending science-based medicine in cancer journals: Energy chelation
My co-bloggers and I have spent considerable time and effort over the last four years writing posts for this blog (and I for my not-so-super-secret other blog) bemoaning the infiltration of quackademic medicine into what once were bastions of evidence- and science-based medicine. We’ve discussed at considerable length reasons for why this steady infiltration of pseudoscience into medical academia has been occurring....