Results for: homeopathy

Namaste - Yoga Practitioner

Conspirituality: Where New Age wellness meets right wing conspiracy thinking

Conspiracy theorists and QAnon may sound miles apart from wellness, yoga and GOOP, but they're converging into "conspirituality", the integration of spirituality and conspiracy theories.

/ February 4, 2021
Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine

The efforts of antivaxxers to portray COVID-19 vaccines as harmful or even deadly continue apace (VAERS edition)

With the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines continuing apace, so are the efforts of antivaxxers to portray the vaccines as dangerous. This time around, they've resurrected the old antivaccine trick of deceptively misusing the VAERS database to imply causation from VAERS reports. That's not how VAERS works, however.

/ February 1, 2021

Ad-Conned: A Critical Look At CASPer

Medical schools are facing a flood of applicants, and have started using for-profit tests alleged to assess people skills as a way to distinguish candidates. The evidence is weak, and lacks transparency.

/ January 29, 2021

Bastyr University’s MPH and MPH/ND programs should not be accredited

Bastyr University's application for accreditation of MPH and MPH/ND programs should be denied. Bastyr's curriculum is filled with pseudoscience and incompatible with the science of public health. Naturopathy is a poor fit for an MPH program, especially considering its opposition to immunization.

/ January 14, 2021

Topical Barley Flour for the Management of Newborn Jaundice: A Real Study Done by Actual Pediatricians

Ever heard of coating a newborn in barley flour as a treatment for jaundice? Me neither...but here we are. And there's a study! This is not satire.

/ January 8, 2021

Responding to Dr. Vinay Prasad’s “dunking on a 7′ hoop” criticism of SBM

Last week, Dr. Vinay Prasad decided to resurrect his misguided criticism from over a year ago likening SBM-style criticisms of alternative medicine to "dunking on a 7' hoop". Why he would decide to renew his attack on combating science disinformation in the middle of a pandemic that has killed close to 300,000 Americans alone we don't know, but Drs. Novella and Gorski...

/ December 13, 2020
Dr. Paul Thomas

The Oregon Medical Board suspends the medical license of antivax pediatrician Dr. Paul Thomas

Late last week, the Oregon Medical Board suspended the licenses of two physicians, one for bragging about not wearing a mask around his patients, the second being Dr. Paul Thomas, an antivaccine pediatrician, whose continued practice was deemed a threat to his patients. It's time for more state medical boards to step up, as Oregon's has.

/ December 7, 2020

Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump. Now what for science-based medicine?

In 2016 and 2020, scientists expressed surprise and alarm at the results of the Presidential election. In 2016 it was alarm that someone as antiscience as Donald Trump was elected, and in 2020 it was over how close the election was, given Trump's dismal record on science, medicine, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Are scientists out of touch? And now what, for federal...

/ November 9, 2020

Aroma Acupoint Therapy

"Aroma acupoint therapy" demonstrates how the combination of several nonsensical ideas involving essential oils and acupuncture produces, unsurprisingly, yet another nonsensical CAM treatment.

/ November 5, 2020
Stem cells

Dubious stem cell trials for autism and the darker side of quackademic medicine

Despite a lack of evidence, Duke University is all-in on stem cells for autism, thanks to a billionaire benefactor and a highly dodgy for-profit Panama stem cell clinic. How did this come to be and what will be the outcome? Whatever the answers to these questions, it is clear that arrangements like the one between Duke University and The Stem Cell Institute...

/ November 2, 2020