Category: Homeopathy

Simply Raw: Making overcooked claims about raw food diets

This week, I plan on taking on something that’s been sitting near the bottom of my “to do list” for several weeks now. Indeed, readers have been sending me links since November or so to what will be the topic of this week’s post, but something somehow has always managed to push it aside each weekend when the time came to sit...

/ January 17, 2011

1023 2011

The 1023 campaign is a UK based organization whose purpose is to raise awareness of the actual claims of homeopathy. The name is a reference to Avogadro’s number (6.02214179×10^23), which is the number of atoms or molecules of a substance in one unit called a mole. This is an important basic concept in chemistry, for it means that there are a finite...

/ January 12, 2011

Mothering magazine: Peddling dangerous health misinformation to new mothers

Last week, the British Medical Journal (BMJ) published an expose by investigative journalist Brian Deer that enumerated in detail the specifics of how a British gastroenterologist turned hero of the anti-vaccine movement had committed scientific fraud by falsifying key aspects of case reports that he used as the basis of his now infamous 1998 Lancet article suggesting a link between the MMR...

/ January 10, 2011

Of SBM and EBM Redux. Part III: Parapsychology is the Role Model for “CAM” Research

This is the third post in this series*; please see Part II for a review. Part II offered several arguments against the assertion that it is a good idea to perform efficacy trials of medical claims that have been refuted by basic science or by other, pre-trial evidence. This post will add to those arguments, continuing to identify the inadequacies of the...

/ January 7, 2011

Ososillyococcinum and other Flu bits.

Osillococcinum I keep half an eye on the medicine displays in stores when I shop, and this year is the first time I have seen Oscillococcinum being sold.  Airborne as been a standard for years, but Airborne has been joined by Oscillococcinum on the shelves.  Dumb and dumber.    It may be a bad case of confirmation bias, but it seems I am...

/ December 17, 2010

CAM and the Law Part 4: Regulation of Supplements and Homeopathic Remedies

Another major set of legal standards that apply to alternative medicine are the laws and regulations that govern the manufacturing and availability of homeopathic and herbal remedies and dietary supplements. Although there is less ambiguity in these standards than in some of the areas I’ve covered previously, there are certainly loopholes aplenty available to avoid the need for any truly scientific standards...

/ December 16, 2010

Of SBM and EBM Redux. Part II: Is it a Good Idea to test Highly Implausible Health Claims?

Review This is the second post in a series* prompted by an essay by statistician Stephen Simon, who argued that Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) is not lacking in the ways that we at Science-Based Medicine have argued. David Gorski responded here, and Prof. Simon responded to Dr. Gorski here. Between that response and the comments following Dr. Gorski’s post it became clear to...

/ December 10, 2010

What’s with the new cough and cold products?

One of my earliest lessons as a pharmacist working in the “real world” was that customers didn’t always act the way I expected. Parents of sick children frequently fell into this category — and the typical vignette went like this for me: Parent has determined that their child is sick, and needs some sort of over-the-counter medicine. Parent asks pharmacist for advice...

/ November 26, 2010

Nosodes Redux: “I hate those meeces to pieces!”

Life and medicine generate facts and experiences that require conceptual frameworks that aid in understanding.  It is no good have a pile of facts if they cannot be understood within a broader understanding. The practice of Infectious Diseases, while certainly aided by understanding anatomy, physiology, microbiology, chemistry and the other sciences that form the core of medicine (referred to in Medical School...

/ November 19, 2010

Homeopathy and the Selling of Nonspecific Effects

One of the core features of science (and therefore science-based medicine) is to precisely identify and control for variables, so that we know what, exactly, is exerting an effect. The classic example of this principle at work is the Hawthorne effect. The term refers to a series of studies performed between 1924 and 1932 at the Hawthorne Works. The studies examined whether...

/ November 17, 2010