Category: Humor
What Should We Do in the Absence of Evidence?
What to do in the absence of a clear diagnosis and randomized, controlled trials? Often nothing, sometimes something. It's complicated.
March Madness: Basketball, Brackets and Psi! Oh my!
In 2011, psychologist Daryl Bem published a highly controversial series of nine experiments designed to tease out the potential existence of precognition, the ability to experience future events. In order to isolate the potential influence of future events on the present, Bem’s experimental design reversed the standard order of psychological investigations. In one experiment, for example, subjects were allowed to practice with...
The DC as PCP? Drug Wars Resume
Chiropractors are once again engaged in intra-fraternal warfare over the chiropractic scope of practice, a saga we’ve chronicled before on SBM. (See the references at end of this post.) Every time it looks like the warring factions have buried their differences, they come rising to the surface like zombies. The International Chiropractors Association (ICA), representing the “straight” faction, wants chiropractic to continue...
Science-Based Satire: Alternative Medical Alert Systems in the News
Belvidere, NE- Bref Albright was taking an unfamiliar route home from work because of a stalled 18-wheeler when he passed by the cell phone tower. As the electromagnetic field washed over him, symptoms of his sensitivity quickly set in. He first noticed a tingling sensation throughout his body and an odd dryness in his mouth and throat. Then nausea and headache. Once...
John Oliver skewers Dr. Oz for his hawking of diet supplements
As regular readers of this blog know, Dr. Mehmet Oz had a very, very bad day last week, in which he received a major tongue lashing from Senator Claire McCaskill (D-MO) for the scientifically unsupported and irresponsible hyperbole he dishes out day after day on his syndicated daytime television show. Personally, I was tempted to pile on myself, but had to content...
Science-Based Satire: Improperly Performed Acupuncture Linked to Spontaneous Human Combustion
Experts in traditional Chinese medicine are warning patients to avoid unlicensed acupuncture practitioners after an apparent case of spontaneous human combustion. Baton Rouge, LA-When investigators climbed from out of the smoldering debris that was the home of Hank Thomas, the looks on their faces told the gathering crowd what these hardened veterans of the Baton Rouge Fire Department couldn’t put into words....
The Sleep Bank
The following article is entirely made up. It’s satire. I am making fun of treatment modalities which are claimed by proponents to cure everything, from real medical ailments to fictional entities like “adrenal fatigue”. I am also poking fun at the state of medical reporting these days. If the concepts discussed seem similar to actual alternative medical practice, it is because a...
Closing out 2012 with a bit of fun: Do you want some quantum with that pseudoscience?
today is the last day of 2012. As I contemplated what I’d write for my last post of 2012, I wondered what to do. Should I do a “year in review” sort of post? Naahh. Too trite and too much work. Should I just do what I normally do? There are, after all, many topics that are out there, some of them...
Disingenuous: Deconstruction of a naturopathic white paper
Science is the Concept by which we measure our reality I don’t believe in magic I don’t believe in I-ching… I just believe in science…and that reality. John Lennon. Sort of. As regular readers of the blog are aware, I am science/reality based. I think the physical and basic sciences provide an excellent understanding of reality at the level of human experience....
Down the Virtual Rabbit Hole: Kangan water®
The interwebs are more than a series of tubes, it has the power of endless distraction and tangents, a series of clickable rabbit holes that can drag you deeper and deeper into the alternative universes that are parallel with our own. One moment you can be on Science Based Medicine, grounded on the terra firma of reality, and then with a click...