Category: Science and Medicine
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...
FDA approval of drugs and transparency in clinical trial results
Note: The reason that I am posting today rather than my usual Monday slot is because the article I discuss here was embargoed until last night. Consequently, I asked Harriet if she would trade days with me this week, and she was kind enough to do so. One thing that science relies on almost absolutely is transparency. Because one of the most...
Pitfalls in Regulating Physicians. Part 1
I had intended today’s posting to be a summary of a real case faced by a state medical board. It is a case of licensed physicians treating patients with a substandard, dangerous, and unequivocally illegal method. My intent was to use it as an illustration of how difficult it can be for medical boards to discipline such practitioners, even when the treatment...
Trouble in the Library
Anyone attempting a systematic review of the medical literature on sectarian medical systems (“CAM”) starts with a serious disability; the literature itself. The National Library of Medicine still lists abstracts for over 30 “alternative medicine” journals, but more concerning, is my estimate that half or more of the articles on sectarian systems published in standard medical journals range from the erroneous to...
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September 18, 2008
Postmodernist attacks on science-based medicine
The postmodernist critique of science consists of two interrelated arguments, epistemological and ideological. Both are based on subjectivity. First, because of the subjectivity of the human object, anthropology, according to the epistemological argument cannot be a science; and in any event the subjectivity of the human subject precludes the possibility of science discovering objective truth. Second, since objectivity is an illusion, science...
A Budget of Anecdotes
“If you’ve done six impossible things this morning, why not round it off with breakfast at Milliway’s—the Restaurant at the End of the Universe!”–Douglas Adams I recently finished reading the book “The Joy of Pi” by David Blatner. There is a chapter about the concept of squaring a circle, also called the quadrature of a circle. The idea is that, with just...