Healthy Habits Global: Spreading False Information about an MLM Coffee with Herbal Additives
When my husband was helping a friend with a project at the house of someone he didn’t know, the lady of the house gave him an earful about the health benefits of the coffee sold by Healthy Habits Global (HHG), a multilevel marketing (MLM) enterprise for which she is a distributor. She sent him home with samples and a brochure with a...
Integrative medicine, naturopathy, and David Katz’s “more fluid concept of evidence”
Dr. David Katz is undoubtedly a heavy hitter in the brave new world of “integrative medicine,” a specialty that seeks to “integrate” pseudoscience with science, nonsense, with sense, and quackery with real medicine. In fairness, that’s not the way physicians like Dr. Katz see it. Rather, they see it as “integrating” the “best of both worlds” to the benefit of patients. However,...
FDA and Homeopathy: Part Two.
Friends, FDA, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Homeopathy, not to praise it. The evil that homeopaths do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones; So let it be with Homeopathy. The noble Ullman Hath told you homeopathy was effective: If it were so, it was a grievous fault, And grievously hath Homeopathy answer’d it....
How should the FDA regulate homeopathic remedies?
The FDA announced recently that it is holding a public hearing on April 21 and 22, to obtain information and comments from stakeholders about the current use of human drug and biological products labeled as homeopathic, as well as the Agency’s regulatory framework for such products. These products include prescription drugs and biological products labeled as homeopathic and over-the-counter (OTC) drugs labeled...
Update on the Tobinick Lawsuit
Last year Edward Tobinick sued the Society for Science-Based Medicine, SGU Productions (the producers of the Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe podcast), Yale University, and me personally for libel and (of all things) false advertising. I am frequently asked how the suit is going so here is an update. Background The lawsuit involved an article I wrote on Science-Based Medicine on May...
Psychology and Psychotherapy: How Much Is Evidence-Based?
Despite all those Polish jokes, Poland has its share of good scientists and critical thinkers. A superb new book illustrates that fact in spades: Psychology Gone Wrong: The Dark Side of Science and Therapy, by Tomasz Witkowski and Maciej Zatonski, Witkowski is a psychologist, science writer, and founder of the Polish Skeptics Club; Zatonski is a surgeon and researcher known for debunking...
Angelina Jolie, surgical strategies for cancer prevention, and genetics denialism (revisited)
Sometimes, weird things happen when I’m at meetings. For example, I just got home from the Society of Surgical Oncology (SSO) meeting in Houston over the weekend. Now, one thing I like about this meeting is that, unlike so many other meetings these days—cough, cough, ASCO, I’m looking at you—at the SSO there wasn’t a single talk I could find about “complementary...
NECSS and SfSBM: A weekend of science and skepticism
A day of Science-Based Medicine, a weekend of science and skepticism NECSS, the North-East Conference on Science and Skepticism, is upon us. Included in the program will be a day of Science-Based Medicine. Full Conference schedule here with Bill Nye as the Keynote speaker. SfSBM speakers will be Harriet Hall, Jann Bellamy, David Gorski, Steve Novella and Mark Crislip. SfSBM speakers will...
Separating Fact from Fiction in the Not-So-Normal Newborn Nursery: Chiropractic and Craniosynostosis
Pediatricians, particularly those who spend a significant amount of time caring for newborns, see a lot of babies with unusually-shaped heads. Although to be fair, the fact that the overwhelming majority of vaginally-delivered babies, and quite a few born via Caesarean section, will have a transient and abnormal shape to their heads makes it, well, not unusual. In fact, I rarely make...
Should the FDA crack down on homeopathic “remedies”?
In the category of potentially dangerous complementary or alternative medicine, I can think of few products worse than ones claimed to relieve asthma, yet don’t actually contain any medicine. Yet these products exist and are widely sold. Just over a year ago I described what might be the most irresponsible homeopathic treatment ever: A homeopathic asthma spray. If there was ever a...