Tag: Galileo

Ignaz Semmelweis washing his hands in chlorine.
Public HealthScience and MedicineScience and the Media

The Semmelweis gambit: A red flag for defending bad science and quackery

A proponent of the Great Barrington Declaration is comparing rejection of its "natural herd immunity" approach to the pandemic to the rejection of Ignaz Semmelweis and his findings. It's a deceptive comparison beloved of all manner of scientific cranks.

/ January 6, 2025
Science and Medicine

Differences Of Opinion

After my fairly recent awakening from shruggieness  (i.e. a condition in which one is largely unaware of or uninterested in CAM) I decided to discuss my concerns about pseudoscience with my friends. One particular friend is a nationally recognized physician who believes in the importance of accurate health information and the promotion of science. However, he sees no urgent need to warn...

/ April 16, 2009
HomeopathyMedical AcademiaMedical Ethics

Prior Probability: the Dirty Little Secret of “Evidence-Based Alternative Medicine”—Continued Again

After the previous posting on the Bayesian approach to clinical trial data, several new comments made it clear to me that more needed to be said. This posting addresses those comments and adds a few more observations regarding the unfortunate consequences of EBM’s neglect of prior probability as it applies to “complementary and alternative medicine” (“CAM”).† The “Galileo gambit” and the statistics gambit...

/ February 29, 2008