Category: Science and Medicine
“Methodolatry”: My new favorite term for one of the shortcomings of evidence-based medicine
I’d like to thank revere right now publicly. He’s taught me a new word: Methodolatry: The profane worship of the randomized clinical trial as the only valid method of investigation. Many of you have e-mailed me and other SBM bloggers about a recent article in The Atlantic by Shannon Brownlee and Jeanne Lenzer, two reporters whose particular bias is that we as...
Hi Ho Silver
I was making rounds at the hospital and, for some strange reason, I was being asked about influenza. No, this is not going to be an entry on influenza. But I was asked if there was anything besides the vaccines that can prevent influenza. Masks and good hand washing will help, I said. Anything else? A nurse suggested colloidal silver.
The New Plague
I’m taking this opportunity to introduce a new blog to the SBM audience, and to draw yet more attention to the growing and dangerous trend of parental vaccine refusal. So, please take a momentary break from your perusal of this most esteemed font of knowledge, and point your browser to Gotham Skeptic.
Copper and Magnetic Bracelets for Arthritis
A recent study published in the journal Complementary Therapies in Medicine shows no benefit from copper or magnetic bracelets for symptomatic treatment of arthritis. While this is a relatively small study, it highlights the lack of evidence to support this billion dollar plus industry. The study is a double-blind, controlled crossover study involving 45 subjects with osteroarthritis. Each subject wore one of...
Mixed Messages on Campus
The past two months have been my first time working in the hospital, as a third-year medical student in my Internal Medicine clerkship. It’s been exciting not only to see how medicine works but to be a part of the action! It really is striking to see the dramatic increases in proficiency and confidence with each stage of the training. From junior...
The wild Weil world of woo
Dr. Weil is often seen as the smiling “mainstream” of alternative medicine. He’s a real doctor (unlike, say, Gary Null), and much of what he advocates is standard and uncontroversial nutritional advice. But Weil illustrates the two biggest problems with so-called alternative medicne: once you’ve decided science is dispensible, the door is open to anything, no matter how insane; and no matter...
Oh Canada.
Oh Canada. Look over here. Not there. Not at the press release. Look here. A real study. Published. With methodologies you can evaluate. Something you can sink your teeth into to help guide policy decisions. You know, published epidemiology. Science. Its called “Partial protection of seasonal trivalent inactivated vaccine against novel pandemic influenza A/H1N1 2009: case-control study in Mexico City.” and published...
9 Reasons to Completely Ignore Joseph Mercola
Some of our more astute readers may have noticed that we are paying influenza slightly more attention than other topics of late. That’s because this situation is new, rapidly changing, and covers more areas of science and medicine than one can easily count. It’s also a subject about which the general public and media are keenly interested. This is an outstanding learning...
CFS: Viral vs somatization
If the association is confirmed, the finding will have near-revolutionary implications for our understanding disease – particularly infectious disease. If there is a confirmed model for such a vague set of symptoms signifying some occult infection limited to immune cells, which produces no repeatable cellular or antibody abnormality, no susceptibility to other infections (such as with HIV) and in which the sites...
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October 14, 2009
Science-based medicine and Eurocentrism
A reader sent me an interesting post from her own blog. It’s well-written, compelling, and betrays an exceptional intelligence. It’s also completely wrong. The piece is called, “Bias, Racism, and Alternative Medicine”, an intriguing title. The first part tries to establish that “Western medicine” in one of many ways of understanding health and disease. She starts with some personal anecdotes—always interesting, rarely...