Results for: supplement quality
Can “optimizing your metabolism” through diet prevent or cure COVID-19?
A favorite claim by those favoring "holistic" therapies is that using diet to "optimize metabolism" can prevent or treat COVID-19. These claims are of a piece with similar claims for many other diseases and are just as exaggerated.
Dexamethasone and Hydroxychloroquine: Why Randomized Controlled Trials Matter
What does the best evidence tell us about hydroxychloroquine and dexamethasone?
The Hallelujah Diet
The Hallelujah Diet is said to be supported by both the Bible and by science. Neither is true.
Hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19: Evidence can’t seem to kill it
Despite the accumulating negative evidence showing that hydroxychloroquine doesn't work against COVID-19, activists continue to promote it as a way out of the pandemic. This week, the AAPS and a Yale epidemiologist joined the fray with embarrassingly bad arguments.
Hydroxychloroquine and the price of abandoning of science- and evidence-based medicine
Based on anecdotal evidence early in the pandemic and then-unreported clinical trials, followed by hype and bad studies by French "brave maverick doctor" Didier Raoult, antimalarial drugs hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine became the de facto standard of care for COVID-19, despite no rigorous evidence that they worked. A steady drip-drip-drip of negative studies has led doctors and health authorities to rethink and backtrack,...
Are hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin an effective treatment for COVID-19?
Saturday morning, President Trump Tweeted a claim that the combination of azithromycin and hydroxychloroquine "have a real chance to be one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine" and hoped that they be "put in use IMMEDIATELY" to treat COVID-19. His claims were based on a single clinical trial out of France. Unfortunately, although it is not implausible that...
Lipogen for Premenstrual Syndrome (PMS)
Lipogen PMS-Free is a dietary phospholipid supplement marketed as a remedy for PMS. The evidence for its effectiveness is less than convincing.
Quackademic medicine update: UC Irvine reneges on promise of scientific rigor
In 2017, UC Irvine promised that the Susan Samueli Integrative Health Institute would be "rigorously evidence-based". A recent review discovers plenty of pseudoscience.
Genetics and evolution in cancer
Several new studies were published earlier this month describing the sequencing of over 2,600 cancer genomes. What the results show include what sorts of mutations drive cancer development and how evolution makes cancers so difficult to treat.
Are medical errors really the third most common cause of death in the U.S.? (2020 edition)
The claim that medical errors are the third leading cause of death in the US has always rested on very shaky evidence; yet it has become common wisdom that is cited as though everyone accepts it. But if estimates of 250,000 to 400,000 deaths due to medical error are way too high, what is the real number? A recently published study suggests...