Category: Health Fraud
Woosceptibility: A Brief Interview With James Randi
James Randi, perhaps better known as “The Amazing Randi” has spent most of his life performing magic shows. In 1996 he created the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) designed to expose the fraudulent claims made by psychics, faith healers, and snake oil salesmen. The ultimate goal of the JREF is to create a new generation of critical thinkers – people who will...
NIH Awards $30 Million Research Dollars To Convicted Felons: Cliff’s Notes Version
In case you’re coming late to this discussion (or have ADD), I’ve summarized Dr. Kimball Atwood’s terrific analysis of the ongoing clinical trial (TACT trial) in which convicted felons were awarded $30 million by the NIH. *** In one of the most unethical clinical trial debacles of our time, the NIH approved a research study (called the TACT Trial – Trial to...
How do scientists become cranks and doctors quacks?
What are the characteristics of physicians and scientists that lead them to go down the dark paths of quackery and pseudoscience?
Politics as Ususal
POLITICS. We have a tacit understanding to exclude politics from the blog, but current events are pushing the borders. It’s not our fault, other forces are on the move. At the border last year was the Iraqi civilian body count issue precipitated by articles in The Lancet. That’s when politics intrudes into medical research and literature. Other borders are matters of licensure, and...
Chemical castration for autism: After three years, the mainstream media finally notices
We’ve written a lot about anti-vaccine zealotry on this blog, as Steve and I take a particular interest in this particular form of dangerous pseudoscience for a number of reasons. One reason, of course, is that the activities of antivaccine groups like Generation Rescue and its spokesmodel since 2007 (Jenny McCarthy, a frequent topic on this blog) have started to frighten parents...
Raw deal: Got diarrhea?
I recently saw a 14 year old girl in my office with a 2 day history of severe abdominal cramps, bloody diarrhea, and fever. Her mother had similar symptoms as did several other members of her household and some family friends. After considerable discomfort, everyone recovered within a few days. The child’s stool culture grew a bacterium called Campylobacter. Campylobacter is a nasty...
Flu Woo Hodge Podge
Perhaps you have discovered for yourself that I am always the last to write a post on a ‘hot’ topic. I am definitely the slowest writer (and thinker?) on this blog, starting each post at least a week before it is up. So the faster writers weigh in first and I am left with clean up. As I finish writing on Thursday,...
The Huffington Post‘s War on Medical Science: A Brief History
I realize that our fearless leader Steve Novella has already written about this topic twice. He has, as usual, done a bang-up job of describing how Arianna Huffington’s political news blog has become a haven for quackery, even going so far as to entitle his followup post The Huffington Post’s War on Science. And he’s absolutely right. The Huffington Post has waged...
Homeocracy II
This is the second installment analysis of a three (and now 4) part series of articles on effects of homeopathy on childhood diarrhea. This second installment elaborates on our findings on data from the second clinical trial in Nicaragua. (1) I should first explain the title. In order for homeopathy to operate as a base or operating system for medicine “for the 21st...
Harvard Medical School: Veritas for Sale (Part V)
September 26, 2002 Kimball Atwood, M.D. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Dear Kim, I have now had time to look into the allegations in your letter of June 14th which, incidentally, I shared with Dr. David Eisenberg and he with several others. I have sought consultation about our exchanges and the gist of my response follows. Some of your concerns and allegations are very helpful and...