Results for: osteopath
Another State Promotes the Pseudoscientific Cult that is “Naturopathic Medicine.” Part 1
Minnesota has recently become the 15th state in the U.S. to formally endorse the claims of a tiny group of naturopaths who portray themselves as physicians.* The bill , like the popular-media “CAM” reports that Steve Novella criticized on Wednesday, merely parrots what these naturopaths claim about themselves. It reveals no attempt to investigate or to judge the tenets of the field. The following excerpts present...
On Being Certain
Neurologist Robert A. Burton, MD has written a gem of a book: On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You’re Not. His thesis is that “Certainty and similar states of ‘knowing what we know’ arise out of involuntary brain mechanisms that, like love or anger, function independently of reason.” Your certainty that you are right has nothing to do with...
Charlatan: Quackery Then and Now
Charlatan: America’s Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam, by Pope Brock, is not only a rip-roaring good read, but it brings up serious issues about regulation of medical practice and prosecution of quackery. It tells the story of John R. Brinkley MD, who transplanted goat glands into people, and of Morris Fishbein MD, the editor...
Science and Chiropractic
In the comments to a previous blog entry, a chiropractor made the following statements: 1. Chiropractic is a science. 2. Chiropractic is based on neurology, anatomy and physiology. 3. Chiropractors are doctors of the nervous system. 4. Chiropractic improves health and quality of life. I offered to write a blog entry on the “science” of chiropractic, and I asked him, both in...
Misleading Language: the Common Currency of “CAM” Characterizations. Part I
The Best Policy From time to time I have been reiterating that correct use of the language has much to do with logic; I should add that it entails also honesty. I use the word “honesty” in its broadest sense… Concision is honesty, honesty concision—that’s one thing you need to know. —John Simon. Paradigms Lost: Reflections on Literacy and its Decline. New York, NY:...
Collision of Incompatibles
Last week’s post was about a recent (October 2007) meeting held at Harvard University on the subject of fascia. The purposes for commenting were several. First, the organizers were partial believers in some forms of “Complementary and Alternative Medicine” (“CAM”), now being called “Integrative” but more realistically called sectarian or anomalous, aberrant medicine. The meeting is another in a long series of...
A Meeting of Incompatibles
On October 3,4, 2007, a conference at Harvard University School of medicine, the first annual “Fascia Research Conference“ was held, sponsored by a notable group of organizations. Organized by Thomas Findley, MD, Phd, Prof. of Physical Medicine and physiatrist at Veterans Administration Hospital East Orange, New Jersey. It was notable for several reasons, and is of interest to medical objectivists – also...