Category: History

Your terrain, your fault? Germ Theory Denial 2025

Terrain theory is making a comeback, offering the illusion that illness is always preventable, and blaming the sick for being sick.

/ July 17, 2025

The Swan Song of a Chiropractic Heretic

After 41 years of private practice as a chiropractor and 60 years of writing books and articles, the age of 94 finds me rethinking my career, wondering if my contributions to the literature justify the path I took.

/ November 14, 2023

Skeptics in the Pub. Cholera.

Prologue from the serialization of the novel Skeptics in the Pub: Cholera.

/ October 7, 2023

Spontaneous Human Combustion. A Sort of Narrative Review.

Burning Man. It is more than a rained out festival in the desert.

/ September 19, 2023

Quack Quack

Joe Schwarcz's new book Quack Quack is an informative and entertaining look at quackery and pseudoscience past and present. A delightful read.

/ January 3, 2023
Quackery duck

The war on the science-based regulation of medicine accelerates

Last week, it was reported how increasingly there is a war on the science-based regulation of medicine and physicians. It's an old story, but unfortunately the forces arrayed against science-based policy have been emboldened by the pandemic and an stronger alliance with political groups that are against government regulation in general.

/ October 31, 2022

How the “Don’t take this medication with grapefruit juice” warning originated

How a chance discovery by one scientist improved the safety of consumers worldwide.

/ September 29, 2022
Nuremberg Doctors Trial

COVID-19 vaccines and the Nuremberg Code

Antivaxxers love to claim that vaccine mandates (especially COVID-19 vaccine mandates) violate the Nuremberg Code and call for Nuremberg-style tribunals to hold public health and vaccine advocates "accountable". As usual, they have no idea what they are talking about. This is also not a new antivax narrative, although what is unprecedented is that what was once fringe even among antivaxxers is now...

/ August 29, 2022

Deciding Which Risks to Take

No medical treatment is risk-free. Paul Offit's new book covers the history of innovations that went awry and advises how to balance the risks of new medical innovations with the risk of not treating.

/ March 8, 2022

Science Goes Viral

Joe Schwarcz has done it again! His new book is not only packed with good science-based information, but is highly entertaining.

/ September 7, 2021