Tag: critical thinking
What Not To Write in an E-mail to SBM
What to do, and what not to do, when sending a critical e-mail to SBM or elsewhere – assuming you want to be taken seriously.
Fooling Myself
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool. –Richard Feynman I like to think of myself as a rational person, but I’ve been fooled by my own experience again and again. I’ve made bad decisions and wasted time and money believing what I was seeing, instead of being objective and looking...
The Brown M&M’s of Science-Based Medicine
Medicine is constantly changing, and like most health professionals, I am required to maintain my competency to practice. I doubt pharmacists are unique in being inundated with offers of continuing medical/pharmacy education. Some courses are free, some cost hundreds of dollars, and it can be difficult to distinguish the high-quality programs from the biased or low-quality education that furthers a agenda, rather...
The Fog of Medicine
I often get called on to be a diagnostician. The referring doctor is uncertain what is going on in the patient, often a fever of unknown origin, and they call me to help figure it out. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. Making the correct diagnosis is not easy, even after 35 years. The classic phrase is the fog of war, but...
What Should We Do in the Absence of Evidence?
What to do in the absence of a clear diagnosis and randomized, controlled trials? Often nothing, sometimes something. It's complicated.
Ancient Origins of Modern Dietary Demons
There are few aspects of daily existence, particularly in modern society, that are more pervasive than advice on what we should eat. Everyone, including friends, family, strangers on Twitter and self-proclaimed experts in nutrition and health, seems to have an opinion on how to eat in order to improve and prolong our lives. Even legitimate organizations dedicated to the health and well-being...
How to Think
Robert Todd Carroll, the author of The Skeptic’s Dictionary, has a new book out: The Critical Thinker’s Dictionary: Biases, Fallacies, and Illusion and what you can do about them. Since some of our commenters and most of the CAM advocates we critique are constantly committing logical fallacies, a survey of logical fallacies is a good idea both for us and for them,...
Fan Mail from an ASEA Supporter
We have an active comments section on our blog, but for some reason some people prefer not to comment there, but to send personal e-mails to authors when they disagree. Some of them make me laugh. Some of them make me despair. We can carry on our struggle better if we know what we are fighting; and in that spirit, I want...
Homeopathy and Its Kindred Delusions
I wrote an introduction to the first in a series of books republishing classic skeptical works - Oliver Wendell Holmes' Homeopathy and Its Kindred Delusions. Reproduced here by permission of the James Randi Educational Foundation is that introduction. Enjoy!
Answering Our Critics – Again!
Critics of Science-Based Medicine keep making the same old tired arguments, despite the fact that their arguments have been repeatedly demolished. Here is a list of recurrent memes, with counterarguments.