Category: Science and Medicine

More evidence that CAM/IM advocates see health care reform as an opportunity to claim legitimacy

Four weeks ago (was it really that long?), I wrote one of my usual lengthy essays for this blog in which I analyzed two editorials published by some very famous advocates of “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM)/”integrative medicine” (IM). They included one in that credulous repository of all things antivaccine The Huffington Post (no, this isn’t about vaccines, but I can’t resist...

/ February 9, 2009

Yes We Can! We Can Abolish the NCCAM! Part III

A Reminder… …of why we keep harping on this. A couple of days ago The Scientist reported that the “economic stimulus package” may include a windfall for the NIH: Senate OKs big NIH bump Posted by Bob Grant [Entry posted at 4th February 2009 04:12 PM GMT] The US Senate, which is furiously debating the details of the economic stimulus package making its...

/ February 6, 2009

Keeping ’em alive

One of the frequent complaints I hear about science-based medicine is that it is dangerous.  Of course, it’s true—so is riding in a train, but it sure beats walking.  And that’s the danger of this particular fallacy—yes, medicine is a sharp tool, but it’s also an effective tool, so we must use it properly.  And this is where the tools of evidence-...

/ February 2, 2009

Yes We Can! We Can Abolish the NCCAM! Part II

Pseudoscience and Dishonesty, continued: “Reliable Information”? In the previous post, we examined misrepresentations by the late National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) Director Stephen Straus and Margaret Chesney, written in 2006 as a rebuttal to a critical article by Donald Marcus and Arthur Grollman in Science magazine. Here, we continue. According to Straus and Chesney: Before the establishment of NCCAM,...

/ January 31, 2009

Reality Deniers

“You have an irrational belief in rational thought.” ~Dr David Scholes, directed towards me. “Humankind cannot bear very much reality.” ~T.S. Eliot I just finished the book Mathematical Cranks by Underwood Dudley, part of a trifecta of skeptical mathematics books. Doctor Dudley is a professor of mathematics at Depau University and a connoisseur of cranks with a mathematical bent. What is a...

/ January 30, 2009

Psychiatry-Bashing

Psychiatry is arguably the least science-based of the medical specialties. Because of that, it comes in for a lot of criticism. Some of the criticism is justified, but too many critics make the mistake of dismissing even the possibility that psychiatry could be scientific, throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

/ January 27, 2009

Historic College of Pharmacy to Honor Homeopathy Leader

I am a graduate of the institution known formerly as the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and Science (PCP&S) – the first college of pharmacy in North America, established in 1821.  The college, now called University of the Sciences in Philadelphia, counts among its alumni John Wyeth, Silas M. Burroughs, Sir Henry Wellcome, several members of the Eli Lilly and McNeil families, and...

/ January 26, 2009

Dismantling NCCAM: A How-To Primer

Two of the earliest posts I wrote for Science-Based Medicine were entitled The infiltration of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) and “integrative medicine” into academia and The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM): Your tax dollars hard at work. Both were intended as a lament over how not only is pseudoscientific quackery, much of it based on a prescientific understanding...

/ January 26, 2009

Yes We Can! We Can Abolish the NCCAM!

…and in so doing, President Obama, you and we would abolish the NIH’s second most prodigious squanderer of precious research funds! Surprise: The National Cancer Institute (NCI) spends slightly more on humbug than does the Center created for that purpose. All told, the NIH squanders almost 1/3 of a billion dollars per year promoting pseudoscience. I’ve decided to add my two cents to the recent groundswell of demand...

/ January 23, 2009

More on the Bravewell issue

Being on the West Coast places me (and Harriet?) at disadvantage in responding to recent developments, as I find out about them later in the day, if that day. (Retirement doesn’t help.) First I had some comments on the WSJ article on “CAM,” the NCCAM by Steve Salerno and the response by the pseudoscince leadership. The 4-author response revealed political tactics used...

/ January 22, 2009