The return of marketing hype for “whole body scans”…now with AI!
Two decades ago, I cut my skeptical teeth countering advertising for whole body scans by companies making extravagant promises for their products. This particular medical fad faded for a while, but now it's back with a vengeance...with AI! Looking at these products, what I see is basically the quackery that is functional medicine on steroids and powered by AI.
Delabeling Penicillin Allergies: A Public Service Announcement from Science-Based Medicine
Is your child allergic to penicillin? Are you sure about that? Penicillin allergy is much less common than widely believed and there is a big push to delabel pediatric and adult patients who actually can tolerate these antibiotics.
The effects of vitamin D supplementation on major cardiac events
A large randomized controlled trial of vitamin D supplementation generates good data to show there is likely no benefit.
Aspartame and Cancer
Despite the leaked new classification as a "possible" carcinogen, the evidence still shows aspartame is safe.
When Doctors Have Different Standards of Evidence for the Virus and the Vaccine
817,000 Americans had already died of COVID by December 23, 2021, and 244,000 more would die the next year. Millions more survived, but were injured. These numbers could have been lower if doctors had not become defense attorneys for SARS‑CoV‑2 and prosecutors against the vaccine, and instead applied similar standards of evidence to both.
RFK Jr. resurrects an old antivax half-truth about “saline placebos” in randomized controlled trials of vaccines
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has resurrected the antivax claim that the childhood vaccine schedule has never been tested in randomized controlled trials (RCTs) with a saline placebo controls (and therefore the vaccine schedule is unsafe). This is an old and deceptive antivax half-truth that ignores both what constitutes a scientifically valid placebo and the ethical requirements for RCTs.
Anti-Vaccine Doctors: “Kids Don’t Need the Vaccine Because They Are Less Likely to Acquire SARS-CoV-2 and Because Most Already Had COVID-19”
Those of us who thought about vaccines before the pandemic know perfectly well that anti-vaxxers start with their conclusions and work backwards to retrofit the "evidence." Doctors who do the same shouldn't be regarded any differently.
Does Intermittent Fasting Work?
New research, same old narrative.
RFK Jr. and Joe Rogan: Putting the old denialist technique of bad faith “Debate me, bro!” challenges on steroids
Joe Rogan conveyed a challenge by antivax crank turned Presidential candidate RFK Jr. to vaccine scientist Dr. Peter Hotez to "debate me, bro!" In the week since, wealthy right wingers have added money to the inducement, and through an awful op-ed by Ross Douthat this weekend, even the New York Times has amped up the pressure for a "debate" about vaccines with...
Steve Kirsch and Brandolini’s law
The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it.