Category: Science and the Media
Pseudo-expertise versus science-based medicine
I am a skeptic. My support for science-based medicine, as important as it is and as much time, sweat, and treasure I spend supporting it, is not the be-all and end-all of my skepticism, which derives from a scientific world view. That’s why, every so often, I like to step back from medicine a bit and look at the broader picture. It’s...
Yes, But. The Annotated Atlantic and Influenza
Reposted on 11/8 with multiple typo corrections. The Atlantic recently published an article called “Does the Vaccine Matter?.” The quick answer is “yes”. If you want to know more, keep reading. They concluded, based on a narrow interpretation of a small subset of the data, that vaccines probably do not matter. The tone suggests that the vaccine is a vast boondoggle perpetuated...
When Loud Wins: Will Your Tax Dollars Pay For Prayer?
Today the LA Times described a bizarre and troublesome healthcare reform bill provision that would require Medicare to pay for Christian Science Prayer as a medical treatment: …a little-noticed provision in the healthcare overhaul bill would require insurers to consider covering Christian Science prayer treatments as medical expenses. The provision was inserted by Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) with the support of Democratic...
The cancer screening kerfuffle erupts again: “Rethinking” screening for breast and prostate cancer
I see that the kerfuffle over screening for cancer has erupted again to the point where it’s found its way out of the rarified air of specialty journals to general medical journals and hence into the mainstream press. Over the last couple of weeks, articles have appeared in newspapers such as the New York Times and Chicago Tribune, radio networks like NPR,...
J.B. Handley of the anti-vaccine group Generation Rescue: Misogynistic attacks on journalists who champion science
There’s been something I’ve been meaning to write about all week, but only just got around to it. There were lots of other things going on at my other online locale, and this topic is such old hat for so many that I really wasn’t sure if it was worth bothering with. My reluctance may also be, sadly, because I’ve become a...
Mainstreaming Science-Based Medicine: A Novel Approach
I have often mused about the difference between being right and being influential – especially in light of the relative success of the anti-vaccine movement. Despite the fact that there is no evidence for a link between vaccines and autism, celebrities like Jenny McCarthy have manufactured public mistrust in one of the safest, most cost effective means of combating disease known to...
The effective wordsmithing of Amy Wallace
One of the most engaging and clearly-written pieces of science journalism over the last year or so was published in Wired magazine last week. Now in the midst of a firestorm of attention, Amy Wallace's, "An Epidemic of Fear: How Panicked Parents Skipping Shots Endangers Us All," is part interview with rotavirus vaccine developer, pediatric infectious disease physician and immunologist, Dr Paul...
/
October 27, 2009
Suzanne Somers’ Knockout: Dangerous misinformation about cancer (part 1)
If there’s one thing I’ve become utterly disgusted with in the time since I first became interested in science-based medicine as a concept, its promotion, and the refutation of quackery and medical pseudoscience, it’s empty-brained celebrities with an agenda. Be it from imbibing the atmosphere within the bubble of woo-friendly southern California or taking a crash course at the University of Google...
“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...
Journalist fails but science wins during flu pandemic
The Atlantic has a monumentally horrible article up about flu vaccination which has been buzzing around our bloggy back channels. There has been some good science reporting out there lately, but this ain’t it. I was hoping one of the best public health blogs would jump on this, and jump on it they did. It is a terrific example of how to...