Category: Homeopathy
Getting NCCAM’s money’s worth: Some results of NCCAM-funded studies of homeopathy
As hard as it is to believe, the Science-Based Medicine blog that you’re so eagerly reading is fast approaching its fifth anniversary of existence. The very first post here was a statement of purpose by Steve Novella on January 1, 2008, and my very first post was a somewhat rambling introduction that in retrospect is mildly embarrassing to me. It is what...
Don’t call CAM “cost-effective” unless it’s actually effective
Before deciding CAM is cost-effective, it is important to determine if is just effective. That low bar has not been surmounted.
Homeopathy’s Recent Woes
Be careful what you wish for. In the last few decades purveyors of dubious medical treatments and products have been trying to go mainstream, and they have had some unfortunate success. They asked for serious scientific investigation into their claims – and they got it. They asked to be treated like real medicine (but not really, they only want the trappings of...
The Swiss Report on Homeopathy
Proponents of homeopathy claim that a Swiss report published in 2012 vindicates homeopathy. The report was actually authored by homeopaths, who used an artificially low standard of evidence to conclude what they were selling actually works. This ignores the improbability of homeopathy, and the many other reviews that have concluded it is nothing more than a placebo.
No, sugar pills won’t repel insects, and other consequences of regulating nonsense
As a group blog, Science-Based Medicine brings a variety of perspectives to issues of science in medicine. However we align around a few core principles which define what science-based medicine is, and how it should be practiced. One principle we emphasize is the importance of subjecting the evaluation of all health interventions and treatments to a single, science-based standard. One of the...
Cantron: A tale of false hope for cancer
A couple of months ago, a reader sent me an article that really disturbed me. In fact, I had originally been planning to write about it not long after I received it. It is, as you might imagine given my specialty and what disturbs me the most wehen I encounter quackery, a story of a cancer patient. Worse, it’s the story of...
Homeopathy and Nanoparticles
I had never heard of Dr. Shantaram Kane, a chemical engineer in Mumbai, India. I don’t know how he heard of me, but he apparently knows I am critical of homeopathy. He e-mailed me out of the blue to tell me about a study he had published in 2010 in the journal Homeopathy: “Extreme homeopathic dilutions retain starting materials: A nanoparticulate perspective.”...
Plausibility bias? You say that as though that were a bad thing!
On Friday, you might have noticed that Mark Crislip hinted at a foreshadowing of a blog post to come. This is that blog post. He knew it was coming because when I saw the article that inspired it, I sent an e-mail to my fellow bloggers marking out my territory like a dog peeing on every tree or protecting my newfound topic...
Stop Making Sense
I usually rely on the Secret. Every two weeks or so the Universe offers up some bit of wacky whimsey and I have a topic for an SBM blog entry. This week the Universe has failed me. Nothing has crossed my LCD so I have no studies to evaluate and I have been unusually busy at work preventing my browsing the Interwebs...
Spring Update on Prior Posts
Although I write the definitive entries on topics in this blog, new information trickles in after publication. The new studies are often not worth an entire entry, recapitulating prior essays, but the new information is still worth a mention. What follows are updates on topics covered in prior SBM posts. Raw Milk In Oregon we are having a small outbreak of infections...