Category: Science and Medicine

Salt: More confirmation bias for your preferred narrative

Judging by the recent press reports, the latest Cochrane review reveals that everything we’ve been told about eating salt, and cardiovascular disease, is wrong: The New York Times: Nostrums: Cutting Salt Has Little Effect on Heart Risk The Daily Mail: Cutting back on salt ‘does not make you healthier’ (despite nanny state warnings) Scientific American: It’s Time to End the War on...

/ July 21, 2011

Honey

I cram for TAM, and, combined with other commitments, not the least of which is that it is finally sunny and warm in Portland, after a year that has resembled All the Summer in a Day,  which leads to a relatively short post.  There are just so many hours in a day and if possible those days need to be spent in...

/ July 15, 2011

SOS DD

What does it take to become a doctor?  Endurance and perseverance help. It is a long haul from college to practice.  But the skill that is most beneficial is the ability to consume prodigious amounts of information, remember it, and recall it as needed.  Although I often relied on ‘B’ to get me through some of the exams. Thinking, specifically critical thinking,...

/ July 1, 2011

Update on Josephine Briggs and the NCCAM

Dr. Gorski is in the throes of grant-writing, so I’m filling in for him today by following up on a topic introduced a few months ago. It involves a key medical player in the U.S. government: Dr. Josephine Briggs, Director of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM). Background Steve Novella and I first encountered Dr. Briggs at the 2nd...

/ June 30, 2011

Magnets and Blood Flow

Over the last week I have received numerous questions about a recent study (yet to be published, but highly publicized in the press) in which it is claimed that the application of a magnetic field can improve blood flow. Physics World declared in the headline that, “Magnetic fields reduce blood viscosity.” This is not a bad summary of the study, but then...

/ June 29, 2011

“CAM” Education in Medical Schools—A Critical Opportunity Missed

Mea culpa to the max. I completely forgot that today is my day to post on SBM, so I’m going to have to cheat a little. Here is a link to a recent article by yours truly that appeared on Virtual Mentor, an online ethics journal published by the AMA with major input from medical students. Note that I didn’t write the...

/ June 24, 2011

Et tu, Biomarkers?

Everything you know may be wrong. Well, not really, but reading the research of John Ioannidis does make you wonder. His work, concentrated on research about research, is a popular topic here at SBM.  And that’s because he’s focused on improving the way evidence is brought to bear on decision-making. His most famous papers get to the core of questioning how we...

/ June 23, 2011

We get mail

There are a few “laws” of the blogosphere, one of them being that a response to a post that comes more than a few weeks later is generally useless or crazy.  But once in a while, someone takes the time to look at an old post and formulate a thoughtful response. This is not one of those times. Or maybe it is....

/ June 22, 2011

The Dow of Accutane

At home the kids current TV show of choice is How I Met Your Mother, supplanting Scrubs as the veg out show in the evening. Both shows are always on a cable channel somewhere and are often broadcast late at night. Late night commercials can be curious, and as I work on projects, I watch the shows and commercials out of the...

/ June 17, 2011

Science-based medicine, skepticism, and the scientific consensus

Editor’s note: This weekend was a big grant writing weekend for me. I’m resubmitting my R01, which means that between now and July 1 or so, my life is insanity, as I try to rewrite it into a form that has a fighting chance of being in the top 7%, which is about the level the NCI is funding at right now....

/ June 13, 2011