Category: Science and the Media
At the Lorne Trottier Symposium…
In lieu of a proper post, please instead accept this announcement of my appearance at the 2010 Lorne Trottier Public Science Symposium in Montreal!
Uff Da! The Mayo Clinic Shills for Snake Oil
A couple of weeks ago, in a review of the Mayo Clinic Book of Home Remedies, Harriet Hall expressed relief that she hadn’t found any “questionable recommendations for complementary & alternative medicine (CAM) treatments” in that book: Since “quackademic” medicine is infiltrating our best institutions and organizations, I wasn’t sure I could trust even the prestigious Mayo Clinic. The Home Remedies book...
Write for Oprah? Wrong for Me
From January through June of 2010 I wrote a column entitled “The Health Inspector” in O, The Oprah Magazine. Now, apparently, I have been fired; although they have not had the common courtesy to tell me so. The whole thing has been a bizarre, frustrating experience. It started last fall, when I got an e-mail from Tyler Graham. He introduced himself as...
Why bother?
It can be rather frustrating to refute the same old canards about alternative medicine. There’s always been argument as to whether this is even useful. Critics (some verging on “concern troll-ism”) argue that skeptics are convincing no one, others that we are too “dickish”. The first view is overly pessimistic (re: our impact), the second overly optimistic (re: the benign nature of...
Tai chi and fibromyalgia in the New England Journal of Medicine: An “alternative” frame succeeds
It never seems to fail. I go away for a few days, in this case to combine fun with pleasure and pleasure with fun by giving a talk to the Chicago Skeptics and at the same time meeting my brand new (well, by this time three weeks old) nephew for the first time, and something always happens. Before I get to what...
Open Letter to Dr. Josephine Briggs
Josephine P. Briggs, M.D. Director, National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine Dear Dr. Briggs, As you know, we’ve met twice. The first time was at the Yale “Integrative Medicine” Symposium in March. The second was in April, when Drs. Novella, Gorski and I met with you for an hour at the NCCAM in Bethesda. At the time I concluded that you...
Bought and Sold: Who Should Pay for CME
There are two topics about which I am a crank. The first, as you might have guessed, is alternative medicine. The other is pharmaceutical reps. Drug companies are somewhat schizophrenic. They have amazing scientists who invent drugs that treat an astounding array of diseases. Then, they take these drugs and turn them over to marketing, to be sold with all the enthusiasm...
New CMS Chief Donald Berwick: a Trojan Horse for Quackery?
NB: I posted this on Health Care Renewal a couple of days ago, figuring that Dr. Gorski’s post would suffice for the SBM readership (he and I had discussed the topic while at TAM8 last week). But Managing Editor Gorski has asked me to repost it here, which I’m happy to do. I am especially pleased to demonstrate that I am capable...
Reliability of Health Information on the Web
Last week at TAM8 some SBM colleagues (David Gorski, Kimball Atwood, Harriet Hall, Rachel Dunlop) and I gave two workshops on how to find reliable health information on the web. As part of my research for this talk I came across a recent and interesting study that I would like to expand upon further – Quality and Content of Internet-Based Information for...
Dr. Donald Berwick and “patient-centered” medicine: Letting the woo into the new health care law?
There’s been a bit of buzz in the health blogs over President Obama’s decision last week to use the mechanism of a recess appointment to be the director of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Recess appointments, for those who may not be aware, allow a President to put a nominee in place when Congress is in recess in order...