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....

/ December 14, 2012

The CAM Docket: Boiron III, et al.

Despite denying wrongdoing, Boiron was still required to reimburse consumers for their products after losing a consumer fraud lawsuit.

/ December 13, 2012

Energy Medicine – Noise-Based Pseudoscience

So-called complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) is largely philosophy-based medicine rather than science based. There are a few core concepts that are endlessly recycled in various forms, but it is mythology and culture, not grounded in the rigorous methods of science that allow us to tell the difference between our satisfying fantasies and hard reality. Sometimes proponents of such philosophies try to...

/ December 12, 2012

Isagenix Study Is Not Convincing

Isagenix is a wellness system sold by multilevel marketing. It consists of a suite of products to be used in various combinations for “nutritional cleansing,” detoxification, and supplementation to aid in weight loss, improve energy and performance, and support healthy aging. It allegedly burns fat while supporting lean muscle, maintains healthy cholesterol levels, supports telomeres, improves resistance to illness, reduces cravings, improves...

/ December 11, 2012
NIH Study Section

The NIH funding process according to John Ioannidis: “Conformity” and “mediocrity”?

John Ioannidis published a paper that concluded that the NIH study section process prioritizes "safe" science and "conformity." Is he correct, or is this an exaggeration that uses a view of science that "brave mavericks" advance science far more rapidly than teams collaborating to make incremental progress?

/ December 10, 2012

Andrew Weil Flirts with Evidence Based Medicine

Andrew Weil, MD, pops up quite frequently on SBM, most recently in this entry by Harriet Hall, so I will not spend much space introducing him. An excellent biography and critique of Dr. Weil was written by Arnold Relman, former Editor of the New England Journal of Medicine. It is over a decade old, but contemporary to some of the events described...

/ December 7, 2012

What does a new drug cost? Part II: The productivity problem

A few weeks ago I reviewed Ben Goldacre’s new book, Bad Pharma, an examination of the pharmaceutical industry, and more broadly, of the way new drugs are discovered, developed and brought to market. As I have noted before, despite the very different health systems that exist around the world, we all rely on private, for-profit, pharmaceutical companies to supply drug products and...

/ December 5, 2012

Support Science-Based Medicine

Next month is the 5 year anniversary of  Science-Based Medicine. We have published 1575 articles so far, with 72,400 comments. We are getting about 475,000 views per month, and SBM has attracted the attention of the mainstream media, government agencies, peer-reviewed journals, and even television and movie producers. Over the last five years we have endeavored to be a valuable resource for...

/ December 5, 2012

Fun With Statistics

Statistics is the essential foundation for science-based medicine.  Unfortunately, it’s a confusing subject that invites errors and misunderstandings.  We non-statisticians could all benefit from learning more about statistics as well as trying to get a better understanding of just how much we don’t know. Most of us are not going to read a statistics textbook, but the book Dicing with Death: Chance,...

/ December 4, 2012

Now that Burzynski has gotten off in 2012, Burzynski The Movie will spawn a sequel in 2013

About a year ago, I became interested in a physician named Stanislaw Burzynski who has been treating cancer with compounds that he calls “antineoplastons” for over three decades without, in my opinion, ever having ever produced any compelling evidence that antineoplastons have significant anticancer activity. Although I had been vaguely aware of Burzynski and his activities, it was the first time that...

/ December 3, 2012