Category: Science and Medicine
Disintegrating Integrative Medicine: Lessons From Baking
Suppose I were to bake you a cake and my ingredient list included the following: Eggs Milk Butter Sand Flour Baking Powder Vanilla Melamine Sugar Chocolate icing What is the problem with the ingredient list? It has integrated inedible and poisonous items into the very fine basic ingredients that make a good cake. This is the exact same problem that the medical...
A natural product of his environment
I’m delighted to have the opportunity to join this outstanding group of medical professional bloggers in adding my natural products angle to the application of science-based medicine. With the exception of Dr. Gorski, who holds MD and PhD degrees, I believe I am the first “only a PhD” to be invited to SBM. However, I have spent much of my career training,...
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October 14, 2008
Is there no end to unscientific treatments for autism?
OK, it’s true that I’m only scheduled to post every other week or so, but I couldn’t resist sharing this one with you (which I’ve cross-posted over at denialism blog). I promise to get back to my assigned schedule after this one. Thanks for your indulgence. –PalMD If you’ve been a regular reader of SBM or denialism blog, you know that plausibility...
Fake diseases, false compassion
Hi, everybody! I’m PalMD (although my byline says differently), and you may remember me from such other blogs as WhiteCoat Underground and denialism. The folks around here were kind enough to give me a regular gig dispensing my brand of medical information transfer, and I’m going to start out with a basic question: what is a disease? Human beings have some pretty...
Cholesterol Skeptics Strike Again
I’m really tired of arguing about cholesterol, but I feel obliged to stand up once more to defend science-based medicine from unfair calumny. Lewis Jones’s article “Cholesterol-shmesterol” in Skeptical Briefs (December 2007) included errors and misconceptions about cholesterol. It was a re-hash of the same kind of misinformation that is being spread by The International Network of Cholesterol Skeptics (THINCS) and that...
Nobel for HIV Discoverers
The Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded this week to two French virologists, Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Luc A. Montagnier, for discovering the AIDS causing virus, the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). They will share half the prize of 1.4 million dollars, the other half going to three Dr. Harald zur Hausen for discovering the human papilloma virus and its relation to cervical cancer....
A “Shruggie” Awakening – One Doctor’s Journey Toward Scientific Enlightenment
In her inaugural post, Dr. Val Jones discusses her transition from being a shruggie - unaware of the risks and harms of alternative medicine - to awakened.
Pitfalls in Regulating Physicians. Part 2: The Games Scoundrels Play
A Few Things that No Doctor Should Do When a physician is accused of DUI, “substance abuse,” being too loose with narcotic prescriptions, throwing scalpels in the OR, or diddling patients, the response of a state medical board† tends to be swift and definitive. Shoot first, ask questions later. After all, the first responsibility of the board is to the public’s safety, not to preserving...
Cognitive Dissonance at the New York Times
Humans have the very odd ability to hold contradictory, even mutually exclusive, ideas in their brains at the same time. There are two basic processes at work to make this possible. The first is compartmentalization – the ideas are simply kept separate. They are trains on different tracks that never cross. We can switch from to the other, but they never crash...
A Budget of Anecdotes
Anecdotal evidence. An oxymoron? Or a valid approach to understanding data? The problem is there are different kinds of anecdotes, used for different purposes, but the purpose of anecdotes is rarely if ever defined explicitly. Anecdotes are used for one purpose by one speaker/writer but interpreted in a different context by the listener/reader. People love anecdotes, especially if the anecdotes are about...