Category: Science and the Media
HPV vaccination misinformation and bias in Medscape
Like many physicians, I often peruse Medscape. It’s generally been a convenient and quick way to catch up on what’s going on in my field not directly related to my research, for which I tend to rely on pre-configured RSS feeds for PubMed searches to highlight any articles related to my areas of interest. Since these searches routinely flag hundreds of articles...
Cell phones and cancer again, or: Oh, no! My cell phone’s going to give me cancer!
Before I start into the meat of this post, I feel the need to emphasize, as strongly as I can, four things: I do not receive any funding from the telecommunications industry in general, or wireless phone companies in particular. None at all. In other words, I’m not in the pocket of “big mobile” any more than I am in the pocket...
Parody beats political analysis
When out of town this past week I was bereft of tantalizing subjects, with our 5 other bloggers covering so many topics so well. I was about to toss in an empty towel, when two news absurdities fell into my driveway in the pages of the SF Chronicle. One was this morning’s (7/23) report that one Dragan Dabic, an alternative medicine healer...
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July 24, 2008
Resistance is futile? Hell, no! (A call to arms)
Well, I won’t back down No, I won’t back down You can stand me up at the gates of hell But I won’t back down Gonna stand my ground Won’t be turned around And I’ll keep this world from draggin’ me down Gonna stand my ground And I won’t back down From “I Won’t Back Down” by Tom Petty, 1989 This week,...
When “investigative reporting” becomes anti-vaccine propaganda
Introduction: The following is the text of a letter that I mailed to Bob Sliva, General Manager of WXYZ-TV in Detroit in response to arguably the most biased and incompetent “investigative report” about mercury, vaccines, or autism that I have ever seen. I sent the letter by snail mail, because I was always taught that that gets a station manager’s attention far...
The Weekly Waluation of the Weasel Words of Woo #8
Playing with More than a Full Deck! The passage submitted in the W^5/2 #7 wasn’t an easy one, but intrepid translators, for the most part, offered waluable insights: Readers were virtually unanimous in the opinion that author Jean Watson, when she uttered it, must have been in an, er, alternative state of consciousness. I can’t imagine what gave them that idea. I mean look...
Why would medical schools associate with quackery? Or, How we did it.
Why would medical schools risk association with quackery? …a question from a Washington Post reporter in 1998. The following hypothetical answer composed in response was never sent. It awaited a proper forum. Could this be one? Well, Jeff, quackery is a pejorative term. Some time ago we recognized that words raise emotions and mental pictures. We recognized the cognitive dissonance raised by...
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June 26, 2008
The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons: Ideology trumps science-based medicine
The Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons (JPANDS) is the official journal of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS). The AAPS tries to represent itself as a legitimate medical professional society, but in reality it promotes antivaccine views, HIV/AIDS denialism, and an Ayn Randian view of the world in which doctors are supermen, Medicare is unconstitutional, and the government should...
Why the latest Geier & Geier paper is not evidence that mercury in vaccines causes autism
Several people have been sending me either links to this paper or even the paper itself: Young HA, Geier DA, Geier MR. (2008). Thimerosal exposure in infants and neurodevelopmental disorders: An assessment of computerized medical records in the Vaccine Safety Datalink. J Neurol Sci. 2008 May 14 [Epub ahead of print]. (Full text here.) A few have asked me whether I was...
The media versus the frontiers of medicine and surgery
A couple of months ago, one of my esteemed co-bloggers, Wally Sampson, wrote an excellent article about borderlines in research in conventional medicine. Such borderlines are particularly common in my area of expertise (cancer, which is also Dr. Sampson’s area of expertise) because there are so many cancers for which we do not as yet have reliably curative therapies. Patients faced with...