Results for: screening
Clinical Decision-Making: Part II
How do doctors make clinical decisions to arrive at a diagnosis? Part 2 of a 3-part series.
Three myths about Stanislaw Burzynski and The Skeptics
As I finished last week’s post, I promised myself that I wouldn’t write about Stanislaw Burzynski again this week. After all, counting this post I will have done 13 posts so far in 2013, and, counting this one, four of them will have been about Burzynski, and three out of the last five posts (three out of four, really, if we eliminate...
Chiropractic and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome
As a pediatrician caring for hospitalized children, I deal with fear on a daily basis. My day is saturated with it. I encounter fear in a variety of presentations, with parental fear the most obvious but probably least impactful on my management decisions. I do spend a lot of time and mental energy calming the fears of others but more managing my...
Kudos to a Journalist
Many SBM readers will remember the late, great Barry Beyerstein, a luminary of the skeptical movement and author of a classic article that has been cited many times on SBM, an explanation of why bogus therapies seem to work. One of his greatest personal accomplishments is not as well known: he produced an exceptional daughter, Lindsay Beyerstein, a freelance writer, philosopher, and...
Epigenetics: It doesn’t mean what quacks think it means
Epigenetics. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. I realize I overuse that little joke, but I can’t help but think that virtually every time I see advocates of so-called “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM) or, as it’s known more commonly now, “integrative medicine” discussing epigenetics. All you have to do to view...
SCAMlandia. CAM in Oregon.
I quite like Portlandia. I find it funny and it captures a part of Portland. I recognize large swaths of the city’s culture in the show. Other representations of the city I recognize less. Sunset publishes beautiful photographs of the NW, but when I look at the photos I think, that section of the city never looks that good. It is quite...
Nutrigenomics – Not Ready for Prime Time
Quackery in medicine takes many forms – use of bad science (pseudoscience), fraud, and reliance on mysticism are a few examples. Perhaps the most insidious form of dubious practice, however, is to use genuine and promising medical science to promote treatments that are simply not at the point of clinical application. New treatments, and especially new approaches to treatment, in medicine often...
Bodytalk: Medical theater
If there were an icon of Science-Based Medicine, I think it should be Sisyphus: pushing a boulder uphill, only to watch it roll down again. Forever. Blogging about pseudoscience in medicine can feel that way at times. There is no end to the variations of nonsense, most health professionals are indifferent at best, and sometimes I wonder if blogging is just preaching...
Disingenuous: Deconstruction of a naturopathic white paper
Science is the Concept by which we measure our reality I don’t believe in magic I don’t believe in I-ching… I just believe in science…and that reality. John Lennon. Sort of. As regular readers of the blog are aware, I am science/reality based. I think the physical and basic sciences provide an excellent understanding of reality at the level of human experience....
A holiday round in the mammography debate
There are times when the best-laid blogging plans of mice and men often go awry, and this isn’t always a bad thing. As the day on which so many Americans indulge in mass consumption of tryptophan-laden meat in order to give thanks approached, I had tentatively planned on doing an update on Stanislaw Burzynski, given that he appears to have slithered away...