Results for: NCCAM
Functional Medicine III
Let’s look at one example. A unknown number of Functional Medicine adherents broadcast call-in programs on radio stations. One FM physician, a Dr. “D” in Northern California graduated from UC Davis School of Medicine (Central California’s Sacramento Valley.) I find her program fascinating, requiring some attentive listening. Dr. D’s recommendations for people’s complaints and conditions are often complex, a chimera of standard...
Senator Tom Harkin and Representative Darrell Issa declare war on science-based medicine
In discussions of that bastion of what Harriet Hall likes to call “tooth fairy science,” where sometimes rigorous science, sometimes not, is applied to the study of hypotheses that are utterly implausible and incredible from a basic science standpoint (such as homeopathy or reiki), the National Center of Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), I’ve often taken Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) to task,...
NIH Awards $30 Million Research Dollars To Convicted Felons: Cliff’s Notes Version
In case you’re coming late to this discussion (or have ADD), I’ve summarized Dr. Kimball Atwood’s terrific analysis of the ongoing clinical trial (TACT trial) in which convicted felons were awarded $30 million by the NIH. *** In one of the most unethical clinical trial debacles of our time, the NIH approved a research study (called the TACT Trial – Trial to...
Does popularity lead to unreliability in scientific research?
One of the major themes here on the Science-Based Medicine (SBM) blog has been about one major shortcoming of the more commonly used evidence-based medicine paradigm (EBM) that has been in ascendance as the preferred method of evaluating clinical evidence. Specifically, as Kim Atwood (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8) has pointed out before, EBM values clinical studies above all...
“Acupuncture Anesthesia”: a Proclamation from Chairman Mao (Part IV)
The Cultural Revolution After investigating ‘acupuncture anesthesia’ in the People’s Republic of China in 1973, John Bonica wrote: From the guarded comments made by several anesthesiologists, I concluded that this disuse [of ‘acupuncture anesthesia,’ after its introduction in 1958 until the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution began in 1966] was the result of disappointing failures in a significant proportion of patients. During the...
Cranks, quacks, and peer review
Last week, I wrote one of my characteristically logorrheic meandering posts about what turns a scientist into a crank or a doctor into a quack. In a sort of continuation of this line of thinking, this week I’ll turn my attention to one of the other most common characteristics of a crank, be he scientific crank (i.e., a creationist), a quack, or...
Barriers To Adoption of Science-Based Medicine
I have a confession to make – it’s not easy keeping up with the other “Joneses” on this blog. My colleagues do a terrific job with thoroughly referenced analyses of key issues in medicine – and I sometimes struggle to think of topics that they haven’t already covered in more depth than I can. So today I asked my friends on Twitter...
How do scientists become cranks and doctors quacks?
What are the characteristics of physicians and scientists that lead them to go down the dark paths of quackery and pseudoscience?
“Acupuncture Anesthesia”: a Proclamation from Chairman Mao (Part III)
A Digression: The Politics of Chinese Medicine in the People’s Republic of China (The Early Years) *** A Partial Book Review: Chinese Medicine in Early Communist China, 1945-63: a Medicine of Revolution, by Kim Taylor Mao’s was a complex personality. He was by nature a control freak, highly secretive, quickly suspicious, ruthless in revenge. These were all personal characteristics that were to...