Category: Science and Medicine
Misleading Language: the Common Currency of “CAM” Characterizations Part II
Background I promised readers the “Advanced Course” for this week, which undoubtedly has you shaking in your boots. Fear not: you’ve already had a taste of advanced, subtle, misleading “CAM” language, and most of you probably “got” it. That was R. Barker Bausell’s analysis of how homeopathy is “hypothesized to work.” In the interest of civility, let me reiterate that I don’t...
Persistence of Memory
I have steadily endeavored to keep my mind free so as to give up any hypothesis, however much beloved (and I cannot resist forming one on every subject), as soon as the facts are shown to be opposed to it. — Charles R. Darwin I’m getting old: 50, almost 51, and that’s over 350 in dog years. As a result of my...
Do Antidepressants Work? The Effect of Publication Bias
A recent meta-analysis of the most commonly prescribed antidepressant drugs raises some very important questions for science-based medicine. The study: Initial Severity and Antidepressant Benefits: A Meta-Analysis of Data Submitted to the Food and Drug Administration, was conducted by Irving Kirsch and colleagues, who reviewed clinical trials of six antidepressants (fluoxetine, venlafaxine, nefazodone, paroxetine, sertraline, and citalopram). They looked at all studies...
The Hannah Poling case and the rebranding of autism by antivaccinationists as a mitochondrial disorder
Regular readers of this blog may have noticed that I seem to have taken on the role of the primary vaccine blogger of this little group of bloggers trying desperately to hold the forces of pseudoscience and magical thinking at bay in the face of powerful forces trying to “integrate” prescientific belief systems with science- and evidence-based medicine, a process that would...
RCT Plausibility Scale
After a few intro paragraphs, I want to present a scale of probability to estimate a value of a “prior” to plug into the formula for obtaining a Bayes Factor. The scale can help to estimate a value, but will still rely on an estimate, the non-quantitative element in Bayesian simulations. However, the checklist may at least provide some objective bases on...
Science-Based Nutrition
Nutrition is embedded in mainstream medical teaching and practice, despite efforts to convince patients to the contrary (usually in an effort to sell them something).
Bad scientific arguments in the service of animal rights activism
One of the greatest threats to the preclinical research necessary for science-based medicine today is animal rights activism. The magnitude of the problem came to the forefront again last week with the news that animal rights terrorists tried to enter the home of a researcher at the University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC) whose research uses mice to study breast cancer and...
Antiscience-Based Medicine in South Africa
South Africa’s Health Minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, is fighting to protect the traditional healers of her country from having their methods tested scientifically. She warns that, “We cannot use Western models of protocols for research and development,” and that she does not want the incorporation of traditional healing to get “bogged down in clinical trials.” Her arguments are anti-scientific and represent a health...
When the popularity of new surgical procedures outpaces science
In science- and evidence-based medicine, the evaluation of surgical procedures represents a unique challenge that is truly qualitatively different from the challenges in medical specialties. Perhaps the most daunting of these challenges is that it is often either ethically unacceptable or logistically impossible to do the gold-standard clinical trial, a double-blind, randomized placebo trial for an operation. After all, the “placebo” in...