Results for: publication bias
Pseudoacademia
The integrity of the scientific basis of medicine is under attack from numerous fronts. It is not only the intrusion of pseudoscience and mysticism into mainstream institutions of medicine, but also attempts to distort or game the scientific process for ideological and financial reasons. Ideological groups such as the anti-vaccine movement, or grassroots organizations promoting pseudodiseases such as chronic Lyme, electromagnetic sensitivity,...
Once more into the screening breach: The New York Times did not kill your patient
Dr. George Lombardi thinks that he could have saved a patient from dying of prostate cancer if a prostate specific antigen test had been done. Is he right? Probably not.
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...
Honey Boo Boo
My son has been coughing for several weeks, and the cough will probably persist for another 2 or 3 weeks. Coughs last a long time. Patients think a cough will go away in less than a week but in reality they are likely to last several weeks. Coughs are a pain for the patient and an annoyance for the people around them....
Nonsense about the Health Effects of Electromagnetic Radiation
There is a widespread belief that low energy electromagnetic radiation fields can cause a wide variety of health issues. Fortunately, there is no convincing evidence that such fears are warranted.
The Dr. Oz Red Palm Oil (non-) Miracle
If there is an antithesis to the principles of science-based medicine, it’s probably the Dr. Oz show. In this daytime television parallel universe, anecdotes are evidence. There are no incremental advances in knowledge — only medical miracles. And every episode neatly offers up three or four takeaway health nuggets that, more often than not, seem to leave the audience more ill-informed about...
Dr. Oz Doubles Down on Green Coffee Bean with a Made-for-TV Clinical Trial
“One of the most important discoveries I believe we’ve made that will help you burn fat – green coffee bean extract” – Dr. Oz, September 10, 2012, Episode “The Fat Burner that Works” Dr. Mehmet Oz may be biggest purveyor of health pseudoscience on television today. How he came to earn this title is a bit baffling, if you look at his...
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?
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...
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...