Zap Your Way to Learning?
The company Halo Neuroscience is now offering a device, the Halo-Sport, which they claim enhances sports performance through “neuropriming.” Their website claims: Neuropriming uses pulses of energy to increase the excitability of motor neurons, benefiting athletes in two ways: accelerated strength and skill acquisition. Regular readers of SBM can probably see where this is going. A proper threshold of evidence Before I...
Testing Testosterone Treatments
Ponce de Leon is said to have been looking for the Fountain of Youth when he explored Florida. That’s only a myth. Now there’s a new myth, that testosterone supplements are a Fountain of Youth for aging men. Men are urged to get their testosterone levels checked if they have any of a long laundry list of vague symptoms. Anti-aging clinics promote...
The hijacking of evidence-based medicine
A hero of the blog, John Ioannidis, worries that evidence-based medicine has been hijacked, and when Ioannidis says something we at SBM listen. But has EBM been "hijacked"?
Why Antibiotic Use Scares Me
Editor’s note: Today we present a guest post from fourth-year medical student Joshua Horton, about the looming problem of antibiotic resistance. Welcome! I read a study recently that alarmed me: acute bronchitis is a condition that rarely requires antibiotics, but three quarters of patients presenting with this condition receive a prescription for antibiotics. Even more worrisome, this statistic has not changed in...
Oregon Health & Science University SCAM Day
I was looking over a recent class catalog from my alma mater, University of Oregon. I see the Astronomy Department is having a day devoted to astrology, inviting astrologers to talk about their profession. And the Chemistry department is having alchemists give an overview on how to change base metals into gold. And, to green our energy, the Physics Department, where I...
American Journal of Public Health article touts “potential public health benefits” of homeopathy
An article in the April, 2016 issue of the American Journal of Public Health caught my eye: “Homeopathy Use by US Adults: Results of a National Survey.” I was pleased to see that homeopathy use is actually quite low. The 2012 National Health Survey found that only 2.1% of U.S. adults used homeopathy in the last 12 months, although that was a...
Another Anti-GMO Paper Retracted
Retraction Watch is a great website. As the name implies, it focuses on a key aspect of quality control in science, the retraction of scientific papers that have already passed peer-review and were published when serious concerns about those papers come to light. Retracting published papers is similar to phase IV clinical trials – tracking side effects of drugs that have already...
Cargo Cult Psychology
Last year I reviewed Tomasz Witkowski and Maciej Zatonski’s book Psychology Gone Wrong where they pointed out that many of psychology’s accepted beliefs and therapies were not based on good evidence. Now Witkowski has written a new book, to be published later this year, Psychology Led Astray: Cargo Cult in Science and Therapy, that is certain to ruffle a lot of feathers....
Confusing overdiagnosis for an “epidemic” of thyroid cancer in Japan after Fukushima
One of my favorite topics to blog about for SBM is the topic of overdiagnosis and overtreatment. These are two interrelated phenomena that most people are blissfully unaware of. Unfortunately, I’d also say that the majority of physicians are only marginally more aware than the public about these confounders of screening programs, if even that. Overdiagnosis has long been appreciated to be...
Ezekiel Stephan: Another Pediatric Death by World View
Reports of a disturbing chain of events that ended in the likely preventable death of a 19-month-old Canadian child have made the rounds this week. The case was discussed by friend of Science-Based Medicine Orac (who I believe is some kind of a protocol droid) on Respectful Insolence two days ago. But even if you’ve read that excellent post, please continue reading...