Category: Science and Medicine
Uneasy Lies the Head That Wears the Flu
Infectious diseases (ID), as those who read my not-so-secret other blog know, is without a doubt the most interesting speciality of medicine. Every interesting disease is infectious in etiology. What is cool about ID is that it has connections into almost every facet of human culture and history. I note that at some point I have gone from being the young whippersnapper...
Pseudoacademia
The integrity of the scientific basis of medicine is under attack from numerous fronts. It is not only the intrusion of pseudoscience and mysticism into mainstream institutions of medicine, but also attempts to distort or game the scientific process for ideological and financial reasons. Ideological groups such as the anti-vaccine movement, or grassroots organizations promoting pseudodiseases such as chronic Lyme, electromagnetic sensitivity,...
Boundaries
Vacation then taxes have consumed my focus the last two weeks, and I have had little time to devote to issues of infectious diseases, much less SBM, so I will instead meander around a more philosophical terrain. I feel guilty when I do not have a substantive, data driven post evaluating a paper or essay in detail, but some weeks there just...
Important Security Notice: SBM Hacked
UPDATE 2013-04-04 1:25 PM EDT: All passwords have been reset. Users will have to use the “Forgot password” function to set a new password. UPDATE 2013-04-04 6:06 PM EDT: Those interested in knowing if one of their passwords was one of the less secure may use this tool to check their email address. No matter the result with that tool, the only...
More shameless self-promotion that is, I hope, at least entertaining
Three weeks ago, I gave a talk to the National Capital Area Skeptics at the National Science Foundation in Arlington, VA. The topic was one near and dear to my heart, namely quackademic medicine. I was informed the other day that the video had finally been posted. Unfortunately, there were some problems with the sound in a couple of places, which our...
Behold the spin! What a new survey of placebo prescribing really tells us
One of the recurring topics here at SBM is the idea of the placebo: What it is, what it isn’t, and how it complicates our evaluation of the scientific evidence. One my earliest lessons after I started following this blog (I was a reader long before I was a writer) was that I didn’t understand placebos well enough to even describe them...
Evidence Thresholds
Defenders of science-based medicine are often confronted with the question (challenged, really): what would it take to convince you that “my sacred cow treatment” works? The challenge contains a thinly veiled accusation — no amount of evidence would convince you because you are a nasty skeptic. There is a threshold of evidence that would convince me of just about anything, however. In...
Clinical Decision-Making Part III
How do doctors make clinical decisions to arrive at a diagnosis? Part 3 of a 3-part series.
Clinical Decision-Making: Part II
How do doctors make clinical decisions to arrive at a diagnosis? Part 2 of a 3-part series.
Acupuncture and Allergic Rhinitis: Another Opportunity for Intellectual Sterility
You need to keep an open mind. A common suggestion offered to naysayers of nonsense. The usual retort concerns not letting one’s brain fall out. Evaluating SCAM’s is less about having an open mind and more about having standards, a conceptual framework that is used to interpret and analyze new information. One of the benefits of writing and reading topics covered by...