Results for: naturopathy

“Science.” You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

I’ve discussed on many occasions over the years how antivaccine activists really, really don’t want to be known as “antivaccine.” However, if there’s one thing that rivals how much antivaccinationists detest being called “antivaccine,” it’s how much they detest being called antiscience. To try to deny that they are antiscience, they will frequently invoke ridiculous analogies such as claiming that being for...

/ May 11, 2015

A journey to alternative and integrative medicine apostasy

WIRED posted a story about Jim Laidler recently discussing his movement away from autism biomed and back to science. It's a good story, that deserves sharing, and explores many of the motivations people have for embracing alternative medicine.

/ May 4, 2015

Legislative Alchemy: Naturopathic licensing and practice expansion 2015

Naturopathy is chock-full of quackery. No doubt about it. Here at SBM and elsewhere, the seemingly limitless nonsense that can be incorporated into naturopathic practice has been documented time and again: detoxification, food “sensitivities,” anti-vaccination ideology, fake diseases (chronic yeast overgrowth, adrenal fatigue, chronic Lyme disease), bogus tests (also here), homeopathy, chelation therapy, assorted other odd-ball treatments, lack of ethical standards, and...

/ April 30, 2015

The Wild West: Tales of a Naturopathic Ethical Review Board

In Arizona, a naturopathic institutional review board has been set up to examine the ethics of naturopathic research projects. It's going about as well as naturopathic training and practice.

/ April 13, 2015

Wikipedia vs Quackery – Standards vs Chaos

Wikipedia, an online open-source encyclopedia, can boast 470 million visitors each month, making it one of the most popular websites on the internet. It is an incredibly useful resource – I think it’s fair to say it is the online reference of record. For that reason people care how topics important to them are represented in Wikipedia. Wikipedia, in fact, has become...

/ April 8, 2015

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...

/ March 30, 2015

The DC as PCP? Drug Wars Resume

Chiropractors are once again engaged in intra-fraternal warfare over the chiropractic scope of practice, a saga we’ve chronicled before on SBM. (See the references at end of this post.) Every time it looks like the warring factions have buried their differences, they come rising to the surface like zombies. The International Chiropractors Association (ICA), representing the “straight” faction, wants chiropractic to continue...

/ March 19, 2015

ND Confession, Part 1: Clinical training inside and out

Despite claims to the contrary, a naturopathic education is not comparable to that of a physician, and the biggest gap is in clinical training after classroom instruction ends.

/ March 13, 2015

“Naturopathic Diaries: Confessions of a Former Naturopath”

Note: In addition to this brief endorsement of Britt’s website, I have also posted my regular every-other-Thursday post, this week discussing the actions taken by the State of Florida to prevent Brian Clement, of the Hippocrates Health Institute, from practicing medicine. Another note: since this post, Britt has started writing for SBM. See “ND Confession, Part 1: Clinical training inside and out.”...

/ March 5, 2015

2015 NHIS Report on Complementary Health Approaches (whatever that means)

Back in 2004, data from the 2002 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) appeared in a report titled “Complementary and Alternative Medicine Use Among Adults: United States, 2002.” It showed a whopping 62% of adults had used CAM in the past 12 months, but only if prayer for health reasons was included. With prayer excluded, the percentage was substantially lower, at 35%. “CAM”...

/ February 19, 2015