Results for: nccam
Misleading Language: the Common Currency of “CAM” Characterizations Part II
Background I promised readers the “Advanced Course” for this week, which undoubtedly has you shaking in your boots. Fear not: you’ve already had a taste of advanced, subtle, misleading “CAM” language, and most of you probably “got” it. That was R. Barker Bausell’s analysis of how homeopathy is “hypothesized to work.” In the interest of civility, let me reiterate that I don’t...
Misleading Language: the Common Currency of “CAM” Characterizations. Part I
The Best Policy From time to time I have been reiterating that correct use of the language has much to do with logic; I should add that it entails also honesty. I use the word “honesty” in its broadest sense… Concision is honesty, honesty concision—that’s one thing you need to know. —John Simon. Paradigms Lost: Reflections on Literacy and its Decline. New York, NY:...
RCT Plausibility Scale
After a few intro paragraphs, I want to present a scale of probability to estimate a value of a “prior” to plug into the formula for obtaining a Bayes Factor. The scale can help to estimate a value, but will still rely on an estimate, the non-quantitative element in Bayesian simulations. However, the checklist may at least provide some objective bases on...
Iraq civilian deaths II: Summing up
Call me naive, but I did not expect the volume or the emotional depth of the responses to the Iraqi civilian death post. I thought many would respond to the new NEJMed survey as I did; wondering about the validity of the previous surveys and recognizing that they have a validity problem. And, that there is a question about what is printed...
Itching and the Imaginary Passenger Brake
The press and government agencies ally to shine a disproportionate amount of publicity on false and improbable medical ideas. (Danger: Congressmen and reporters at work.) The latest was a press release from either the Centers for Disease Control (and prevention? – I’ll get to the “prevention” part later,) or from Kaiser-Permanente Medical Group. Three Bay Area newspapers carried simultaneous articles. The articles...
The infiltration of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) and “integrative medicine” into academia
A few years back, my co-blogger Wally Sampson wrote a now infamous editorial entitled Why the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) Should Be Defunded. When I first read it, I must admit, I found it to be a bit harsh and–dare I say?–even close-minded. After all, plausibility aside, I believed at the time that the only way to demonstrate...
Collision of Incompatibles
Last week’s post was about a recent (October 2007) meeting held at Harvard University on the subject of fascia. The purposes for commenting were several. First, the organizers were partial believers in some forms of “Complementary and Alternative Medicine” (“CAM”), now being called “Integrative” but more realistically called sectarian or anomalous, aberrant medicine. The meeting is another in a long series of...
Homeopathy and Evidence-Based Medicine: Back to the Future – Part II
Part I of this blog† summarized the origin of homeopathy, invented in 1790 by Samuel Christian Hahnemann. It discussed Hahnemann’s first two “homœopathic laws of nature,” similia similibus curantur (like cures like) and the “law of infinitesimals,” and showed that his rationales for each have long been refuted. Hahnemann proclaimed a third doctrine, the “law of psora” [“itch”], said by him to...
Snake Oil Science
For my first blog entry, I wanted to write about something important, and I couldn’t think of anything more important than a recent book by R. Barker Bausell: Snake Oil Science: The Truth About Complementary and Alternative Medicine. If you want to understand how medical research works, if you want to know what can lead patients and scientists to false conclusions, if...