Results for: homeopathy
Naturopathic Medical Magic in the NW
As regular readers know, I live in the great Pacific Northwest, specifically Portland, Oregon. I am at home in the organic/hippy/environmental mind-set. It is what I grew up with. It is a relaxed, informal place to live. It is not much of an exaggeration to say that formal attire is tucking your tee shirt into your jeans. At least the metro area,...
It’s time for pharmacies to stop selling sugar pills
Why are pharmacies selling sugar pills to consumers that are packaged like medicine? And what will it take for pharmacies to stop?
Cryotherapy: A Layman’s Attempt to Understand the Science
NOTE: I get a lot of emails asking me whether treatment X is evidence-based or a scam. This one was different. Zachary Hoffman had done his homework and had already answered the question for himself (at least, as well as it could be answered with the existing published evidence). I asked him to write up his findings as a guest post for...
Ethical Failures
It is summer vacation for me in Eastern Oregon at Sunriver. Unbelievable geology, fantastic hikes, great biking, wonderful golf, delicious beer and good food. The thesaurus fails me for superlatives. It is hard to get too riled up about all things SCAM to produce a blog entry when I could be doing one or all of the above. I really...
Nevada’s new quack protection law
Practicing a licensed health care profession, such as medicine, without a license used to be a felony in Nevada. Not any more. As of July 1, quacks and charlatans are free to ply their trades unencumbered by the threat that they might have to answer to the regulatory authorities for their misdeeds, as long as they follow a few simple rules. This...
University of Toronto Coddles Quackery
The ongoing saga of quackademic medicine continues. The University of Toronto School of Public Health has been caught teaching utter nonsense to its students. Even worse, when called out on this dereliction of their academic responsibility, they defended it. Unfortunately, it is all too clear how something like this can happen. The department was teaching an alternative medicine course at U of...
Cochrane Review on Community Water Fluoridation
One of the overriding themes of the Science Based Medicine blog is to use rigorous science when evaluating any health claim – be it medical, dental, dietary, fitness, or any other assertion put forth with the intention of improving one’s health. Once the scientific evidence is evaluated as to efficacy, there are other criteria which must be taken into consideration, such as...
Answering Cancer Quackery: The Sophisticated Approach to True Believers
I got an e-mail with a link to a video featuring “Dr.” Leonard Coldwell, a naturopath who has been characterized on RationalWiki as a scammer and all-round mountebank. Here are just a few examples of his claims in that video: Every cancer can be cured in 2-16 weeks. The second you are alkaline, the cancer already stops. A pH of 7.36 is...
NCCIH and the true evolution of integrative medicine
There can be no doubt that, when it comes to medicine, The Atlantic has an enormous blind spot. Under the guise of being seemingly “skeptical,” the magazine has, over the last few years, published some truly atrocious articles about medicine. I first noticed this during the H1N1 pandemic, when The Atlantic published an article lionizing flu vaccine “skeptic” Tom Jefferson, who, unfortunately,...
In which I steal a title: Is medicine a scientific enterprise?
A week ago, I attended the Center For Inquiry Reason for Change Conference, where I participated in a panel on—what else?—alternative medicine with—who else?—Harriet Hall and our fearless leader Steve Novella. Before the panel, we all gave brief talks on areas that we consider important. As you might expect, I chose to give a brief introduction to what I like to call...