Tag: integrative medicine

A woman lies face down on a massage table with several acupuncture needles inserted into her bare upper back, receiving acupuncture treatment. A white towel covers part of her body, and she appears relaxed.

More credulous nonsense about acupuncture, this time from National Geographic

PNAS recently published credulous nonsense about acupuncture so bad that I thought it couldn't be topped. "Hold my beer!" cried National Geographic, as it proceeded to top PNAS.

/ May 11, 2026
Functional medicine

KevinMD platforms criticism of MAHA by a “functional medicine” practitioner

Although some of the criticisms of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s MAHA movement are spot on, why did KevinMD platform a practitioner of functional medicine woo to make them?

/ April 20, 2026

Using alternative medicine to treat cancer, even alongside conventional therapies, is still a bad idea

With the MAHA movement poised to introduce a lot more "integrative" or "complementary and alternative" treatments into oncology (and medicine in general), a new study shows the likely result.

/ March 16, 2026
Integrative oncology

Revisiting “integrative oncology”: The battle to integrate quackery with oncology continues

Nature Reviews Cancer published a propaganda piece disguised as commentary promoting "integrative oncology," or what I like to call "integrating" quackery with oncology.

/ August 19, 2024
Latent profile analysis

Alternative medicine and antivax: Two crappy tastes that taste crappy together—particularly when among physicians

A recent study reaffirms the high degree of correlation among physicians between antivax views and an embrace of quackery. This is an old finding that needs to be documented periodically and shows why the acceptance of non-science-based treatments by physicians endangers vaccination efforts.

/ October 16, 2023
EBM hierarchy

Evidence-based medicine vs. basic science in medical school

Last week Dr. Vinay Prasad wrote a Substack arguing that medical students should learn the principles of evidence-based medicine before basic science.This is a recipe for amplifying the main flaw in EBM that science-based medicine was meant to correct, and Dr. Prasad's arguments would have been right at home on an integrative medicine blog. [Note ADDENDUM.]

/ May 22, 2023
Aragorn at the Black Gate of Mordor

After 15 years of SBM: Lessons learned and what the future holds

Last week, Dr. Novella discussed what SBM has accomplished over the last 15 years. I'm going to discuss lessons learned, what has changed, and remaining huge challenges. Unfortunately, after the pandemic, our position in 2022 reminds me even more than ever of Aragorn at the Black Gate of Mordor, but that does not mean things are hopeless.

/ December 26, 2022
Dr Andrew Wakefield

Why is anyone surprised that there are so many antivax physicians?

A new survey suggests that a disturbingly high percentage of physicians are either vaccine hesitant or actually antivaccine. Those of us who have been writing about the antivaccine movement know that this is not new, but it seems new to our colleagues who weren't paying attention before the pandemic and assured themselves that the problem was just Andrew Wakefield. The question is:...

/ April 18, 2022
Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB)

State medical boards vs. COVID-19 misinformation, an update

The disinformation epidemic about COVID-19 has pushed state medical boards to consider disciplining physicians who promote COVID-19 disinformation. How would that work? What are the obstacles? Is it even possible? It should be, but it will be messy and complicated.

/ September 27, 2021

American Academy of Family Physicians Supports Integrative Medicine

The American Academy of Family Physicians supports integrative medicine and makes recommendations based on less-than-rigorous evidence.

/ July 20, 2021