Results for: nccam

Traditional Chinese herbalism at the Cleveland Clinic? What happened to science-based medicine?

Quackademic medicine has taken a bold step forward at The Cleveland Clinic, which has opened a traditional Chinese medicine herbal practice.

/ April 26, 2014

Curing Hepatitis C: A Success Story and a Price Tag

Previously incurable, hepatitis C now has a treatment. A very, very expensive treatment. But there is hope for acutely and chronically infected people.

/ April 22, 2014

Bill and Hillary Clinton go woo with Dr. Mark Hyman and “functional medicine”

Mark Hyman is a "pioneer" (if you can call it that) in a new form of quackery known as functional medicine, which combines a lot of the worst features of conventional medicine with a large dollop of "make it up as you go along" quackery. Unfortunately, it appears that the Clintons find his narrative compelling.

/ April 14, 2014

Chiropractic: A Summary of Concerns

Although obscured by controversy, there is evidence to indicate that spinal manipulation can be as effective as conventional treatment methods in relieving low-back pain.1,2,3,4 This grain of truth mixed with chiropractic vertebral subluxation theory that encompasses a broad scope of ailments makes it difficult for the average person to distinguish between appropriate and inappropriate use of manipulation by chiropractors. A person who...

/ April 2, 2014
University of Arizona Cancer Center

A tale of quackademic medicine at the University of Arizona Cancer Center

NCI-designated comprehensive cancer centers like the University of Arizona should provide rigorously science-based treatment. Unfortunately, magical mystical "treatments" like reiki are offered to UA patients, as I learned from a father of a child treated there.

/ March 17, 2014

Eric Merola and Ralph Moss try to exhume the rotting corpse of Laetrile in a new movie

Note: Some of you have probably seen a different version of this post fairly recently. I have a grant deadline this week and just didn’t have time to come up with fresh material up to the standards of SBM. This left me with two choices: Post a “rerun” of an old post, or recycle something. I decided to recycle something for reasons...

/ February 24, 2014

How to Think

Robert Todd Carroll, the author of The Skeptic’s Dictionary, has a new book out: The Critical Thinker’s Dictionary: Biases, Fallacies, and Illusion and what you can do about them. Since some of our commenters and most of the CAM advocates we critique are constantly committing logical fallacies, a survey of logical fallacies is a good idea both for us and for them,...

/ February 11, 2014

The return of the revenge of high dose vitamin C for cancer

Vitamin C is back in the news as a cancer cure. Is it? No, no it is not.

/ February 10, 2014

I Visited a Chickasaw Healer and All I Got Was an Elk Sinew and Buffalo Horn Bracelet

Which headline is real? I Visited a Alchemist. As American alternative chemistry grows in popularity, I decided to experience an even older style of nontraditional transmutation of metals. I Visited an Astrologer. As American alternative astronomy grows in popularity, I decided to experience an even older style of nontraditional stargazing. I Visited a Bloodletter. As American alternative medicine grows in popularity, I...

/ February 7, 2014

Ngrams and CAM

Ngram is a Google analytic tool/way to waste lots of time on the internet, a byproduct of Google’s scanning millions of books into its database. In a matter of seconds, Ngram scans words from about 7.5 million books, an estimated 6 percent of all books ever published. Type a word or phrase in the Ngram Viewer search box and in seconds a...

/ January 23, 2014