Category: Science and Medicine
Snake oil for snakebites (and other bad ideas)
Spring is here. I don’t say that because of the warmer weather, the blooming tulips in my back yard, or the current effect of the earth’s axial tilt on the Northern hemisphere. No, in my somewhat warped world of the pediatric ICU seasons are marked by illnesses and injuries with an annual rhythm. Fall begins with a spike in cases of bronchiolitis,...
Medicine’s Beautiful Idea
For most of human history, doctors have killed their patients more often than they have saved them. An excellent new book, Taking the Medicine: A Short History of Medicine’s Beautiful Idea, and Our Difficulty Swallowing It, by Druin Burch, MD, describes medicine’s bleak past, how better ways of thinking led to modern successes, and how failure to adopt those better ways of...
How do religious-based hospitals affect physician behavior?
Science-based medicine is, among other things, a tool. Science helps us sequester our biases so that we may better understand reality. Of course, there is no way to avoid being human; our biases and our intuition still betray us, and when they do, we use other tools. Ethics help us think through situations using an explicitly-stated set of values that most of...
Low Dose Naltrexone – Bogus or Cutting Edge Science?
On SBM we have documented the many and various ways that science is abused in the pursuit of health (or making money from those who are pursuing health). One such method is to take a new, but reasonable, scientific hypothesis and run with it, long past the current state of the evidence. We see this with the many bogus stem cell therapy...
Pediatric Chiropractic Care: Scientifically Indefensible?
In a paper published in 2008, two academic chiropractors offered this observation: “The health claims made by chiropractors with respect to the application of manipulation as a health care intervention for pediatric health conditions continue to be supported by only low levels of scientific evidence. Chiropractors continue to treat a wide variety of pediatric health conditions.”1 Despite lack of support by the...
Dr. Jay Gordon: Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing
Dr. Jay Gordon is dissatisfied with how a PBS documentary handled the vaccines-autism controversy. Despite a lengthy effort at rebuttal, none of his points reflect what is known scientifically about vaccines and autism. Instead he relies on unjustified claims, appeals to emotion, and tacit assertions that his clinical judgment is equal, or superior, to the scientific evidence to date.
Demonizing “Big Pharma”
To be blunt up front – SBM is not apologetic about the pharmaceutical industry. We get zero funding from any company, and have no ties of any kind to “big pharma.” In today’s world I have to spend time making that clear, because despite the reality critics are free to assume and falsely claim that our message is coming straight from the...
Nine Breakthroughs and a Breakdown
In his new book Breakthrough! How the 10 Greatest Discoveries in Medicine Saved Millions and Changed Our View of the World Jon Queijo describes what he believes are the 10 greatest discoveries. 9 of them are uncontroversial discoveries that have been on other top-10 lists, but his 10th choice is one that no other list of top discoveries has ever included. He...
The dangers of opponents of science-based medicine
Michael Specter, author of Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives, on the danger of science denial: Given that more than half of the video is devoted to discussing vaccine denialism, supplements, and HIV/AIDS denialism, I think Spector’s talk is quite appropriate for this blog. Perhaps the best quote in Specter’s entire speech is this:...