Category: Science and Medicine
Does treating fever spread influenza?
Treating a fever with medication like Advil or Tylenol is reflex action when we come down with colds and influenza. But could treating fevers actually worsen an illness and contribute to its spread in the population? That’s the impression you may have gained from the headlines and press last week, where antipyretics (fever-reducing medications) were described as some type of “anti-vaccine”: Fever-reducing...
Fighting Against Evidence
For the past 17 years Edge magazine has put an interesting question to a group of people they consider to be smart public intellectuals. This year’s question is: What Scientific Idea is Ready for Retirement? Several of the answers display, in my opinion, a hostility toward science itself. Two in particular aim their sights at science in medicine, the first by Dean...
The New Cough and Cold Products for Children: Evidence is Optional and Science is Marketing
It’s the time of year where if you’re not sick, someone you know probably is. The influenza season in the Northern hemisphere started out slowly, but seems to be accelerating and hasn’t peaked yet. Add that to cold viruses circulating, and you get the peak purchasing period for cough and cold remedies. John Snyder gave a nice summary of the evidence base...
Quantum Snake Oil – A Primer
Let’s conduct a little thought experiment. First, for the sake of this thought experiment let’s assume that you have no morals, ethics, or conscience. You are comfortable lying to people, even if they are sick, and even if it will harm their health. Your task is to get as many people as possible to believe that small bits of plastic can improve...
Placebo effects are not the “power of positive thinking”
Here we go again. I once said that, in the wake of study after study that fails to find activity of various “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM) beyond that of placebo, CAM advocates are now in the midst of a “rebranding” campaign in which CAM is said to work through the “power of placebo.” Personally, I’ve argued that in reality this new...
Acupuncture Whac-a-Mole ™
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. – George Santayana Most people don’t have that willingness to break bad habits. They have a lot of excuses and they continue to produce bad clinical studies. – Carlos Santana (Well, not the last 4 words.) One is a guitar player, one is a philosopher. I get them confused. I think...
Announcing the Society for Science-Based Medicine
We are proud to announce a new organization: The Society for Science-Based Medicine. A Society for a community of like-minded individuals, both in and out of health care, who support the goals of Science-Based Medicine. People should not suffer, die, go bankrupt, and lose time and hope because of complementary and alternative pseudo-medicine.
Corporal Punishment in the Home: Parenting Tool or Parenting Fail…
One of the most commonly practiced strategies used by parents to alter long term behavior of their children is corporal punishment, commonly referred to as spanking. But use of the term spanking is problematic in that how caregivers interpret it varies widely, and there is frequent overlap with what pediatricians consider to be abuse. Despite a great deal of evidence showing that...
Doctors Are Not “Only Out to Make Money”
There’s an old joke about the doctor whose son graduates from medical school and joins his practice. After a while the son tells his father, “You know old Mrs. Jones? You’ve been treating her rash for years and she never got better. I prescribed a new steroid cream and her rash is gone!” The father responds, “You idiot! That rash put you...
Motivations
We received the following letter: Your blog, the SBM page, has come up for me several times in my research. I’m an RN trying to research cancer treatment, for myself, I am the patient. I’m also a licensed massage practitioner with a 30 year history using “alternative” or “complementary” medicine successfully to treat myself for various things. When your blog has come...