Results for: naturopathy
CAM on campus: Integrative Medicine
My previous posts have described guest lecturers at my medical school campus, invited by a student interest group in CAM. Those events continue; currently ongoing is an 8-weekend certification course in Ayurveda for the subsidized cost of $1500 (includes “tuition, syllabus, and personal guru”). I could pick on this student group, but what’s the point? There will always be medical students who...
Causation and Hill’s Criteria
Causation is not so simple to determine as one would think. A mantra at SBM is ‘association is not causation’ and much of the belief in the efficacy of a variety of quack nostrums occurs because improvement occurs after use of a nostrum, therefore improvement occurs because of use of a nostrum. It is why vaccines as a cause of autism are...
Naturopaths and the anti-vaccine movement: Hijacking the law in service of pseudoscience
Time and time again, we’ve seen it. When pseudoscientists and quacks can’t persuade the scientific and medical community of the validity of their claims, they go to the law to try to gain the legitimacy that their claims can’t garner through proving themselves by the scientific method. True, purveyors of pseudoscience and unscientifically-derived medical practices do crave the respectability of science. That’s...
Ontario naturopathic prescribing proposal is bad medicine
Two weeks ago, Canadian Skeptics United published on their Skeptic North site a piece by an Ontario pharmacist criticizing a proposal by the province to grant limited prescribing rights to naturopaths. The essay, which was reprinted in the National Post on Tuesday, outlines the intellectual and practical conundrum presented by allowing those with education that diverges from science-based practices to prescribe drugs....
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November 27, 2009
Infiltration of Quackademic Medicine into Mainstream: A pernicious influence
Editor’s note: Kausik Datta, Ph.D. is postdoctoral research fellow at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He works in immunology, specifically as related to two major mycoses (Aspergillosis and Cryptococcosis). Rationality and skepticism have been his long-standing interests, which led him into science- and evidence-based medicine. This is his first contribution to this blog. Quackademic ‘Medicine’* is a collective of pseudoscientific, data-free,...
WooMD
Consider this list: Sex Matters: tuning in to what turns you on. Ticker tune-up tips for guys. Manatomy explained. Burning down under? It’s time to fess up. Pumped Up: ED meds aren’t working? An implant could be the solution. When your hoo-ha’s burning, don’t use this common cure! Go Om: Meditation can be the healthy answer for type A’s. Sexy Seniors: The...
SBM Topic-Based Reference
This section of Science-Based Medicine is dedicated to reference resources for major topics and issues relevant to science and medicine. For each topic we will give a concise overview followed by an index of SBM posts on the topic, and key outside resources. We will also list important peer-reviewed research relating to the topic with a brief description of the findings. This...
Editors
Editorial staff and contributors at Science-Based Medicine are physicians and other professionals who are alarmed at the manner in which unscientific and pseudoscientific health care ideas have increasingly infiltrated academic medicine and medicine at large. Our goal is to examine these claims in the light of science and skepticism. We believe that the best medicine is based on scientific principles — considering...
Senator Tom Harkin and Representative Darrell Issa declare war on science-based medicine
In discussions of that bastion of what Harriet Hall likes to call “tooth fairy science,” where sometimes rigorous science, sometimes not, is applied to the study of hypotheses that are utterly implausible and incredible from a basic science standpoint (such as homeopathy or reiki), the National Center of Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), I’ve often taken Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) to task,...
Medical training versus scientific training
This month I will begin my third year of medical school, after a three-year break for laboratory research. Living alternately in the worlds of med school and grad school has prompted me to reflect on differences between these training programs. [Obvious disclaimer: I have studied at a single institution, and only for five years.] I am enrolled in a dual-degree MD/PhD program. About 120 US medical schools...