How popular is acupuncture?
Everybody’s Doing It One argument that often comes up when skeptics and proponents of so-called complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) debate is the question of the popularity of various CAM practices. Advocates of CAM often claim these practices are widely used and growing rapidly in popularity. Obviously, CAM proponents have an interest in characterizing their practices as widely accepted and utilized. Even...
Asian Bear Bile Remedies: Traditional Medicine or Barbarism?
Imagine living 20 years spending 24 hours a day in a cage that tightly fits your body, not giving you room to stand up, stretch out, turn around, or move at all. Imagine that twice a day during these years you would have a metal catheter inserted into a hole which has been cut into your abdomen, allowing the catheter to easily...
CAM and Evidenced-Based Medicine
Mark Tonelli, MD has problems with evidence-based medicine (EBM). He has published a few articles detailing his issues, and he makes some legitimate points. We at science-based medicine (SBM) have a few issues with the execution of EBM as well, so I am sympathetic to constructive criticism. In an article titled: Integrating evidence into clinical practice: an alternative to evidence-based approaches. The...
Herbal Remedies, Street Drugs, and Pharmacology
David Kroll’s recent article on thunder god vine is a great example of what can be learned by using science to study plants identified by herbalists as therapeutic. The herbalists’ arsenal can be a rich source of potential knowledge. But Kroll’s article is also a reminder that blindly trusting herbalists’ recommendations for treatment can be risky. Herbal medicine has always fascinated me....
Join Trine Tsouderos for a web chat with Dr. Paul Offit
Here’s something for you all to check out. Trine Tsouderos, the journalist from The Chicago Tribune who’s distinguished herself as being one of the few reporters who “gets it” when it comes to quackery and the anti-vaccine movement (just put her name in the search box of this blog for some examples) will be hosting a web chat about vaccines featuring none...
Ann Coulter says: Radiation is good for you!
In her eagerness to convince everyone that radiation leakage from the Fukushima reactor damaged by the recent tsunami poses no threat, Ann Coulter turns the concept of hormesis on its head and tries to argue that a little extra ionizing radiation is good for you. Ann Coulter being Ann Coulter, she has no clue what she is talking about, but can spin...
How to Interrogate an Herbal Medicine: Thunder God Vine
Thunder god vine may not be a useful herbal medicine but the compounds isolated from it are fascinating – if not as medicines, then most certainly as laboratory tools. Nature Chemical Biology recently published an article where a research team from Johns Hopkins, the University of Colorado at Boulder, and Drew University in New Jersey, has determined the molecular mechanism of action...
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March 18, 2011
Dr. Oz and John Edward: Just when I thought Dr. Oz couldn’t go any lower, he proves me wrong
We at SBM had thought Dr. Oz couldn't go any lower, but this week he proved us wrong. This Tuesday, Dr. Oz featured "psychic medium" scammer John Edward on his show and claimed that such psychic mediums can help people deal with their grief over the loss of a loved one.
Help – My Doctor is a Crank!
I often receive e-mail from SBM readers (or SGU listeners) who have had the experience of their doctor, nurse, dentist, physical therapist, or other health care provider recommending to them a treatment option that seems dubious, if not outright pseudoscientific. They want advice on what to do. There are common themes to the e-mails – the writer often feels very uncomfortable in...
Spreading the Word
Lest some of our readers imagine that the authors of this blog are mere armchair opinion-spouters and keyboard-tappers for one little blog, I’d like to point out some of the other things we do to spread the word about science and reason. Steven Novella’s new course about medical myths for “The Great Courses” of The Teaching Company is a prime example: more about...