Tag: R. Barker Bausell

Clinical TrialsCritical ThinkingScience and Medicine

Pitfalls in Research: Why Studies Are More Often Wrong than Right

Here is a course guide to episode 9, "Pitfalls of Research", of my YouTube lecture series on science-based medicine.

/ March 3, 2020
AcupunctureClinical TrialsEnergy Medicine

Of SBM and EBM Redux. Part III: Parapsychology is the Role Model for “CAM” Research

This is the third post in this series*; please see Part II for a review. Part II offered several arguments against the assertion that it is a good idea to perform efficacy trials of medical claims that have been refuted by basic science or by other, pre-trial evidence. This post will add to those arguments, continuing to identify the inadequacies of the...

/ January 7, 2011
Homeopathy

Science-Based Medicine 101: Plausibility

In part 2 of the Science-Based Medicine 101 series we take a look at the second pillar of good science: plausibility. This blog post was written for a lay audience so more advanced readers will need to indulge me here… I really enjoy sci-fi action movies. I love the convincing special effects and the fact that heroes can accomplish the physically impossible...

/ August 13, 2009
Science and the Media

Why False Positive Results Are So Common In Medicine

Have you ever been surprised and confused by what seem to be conflicting results from scientific research? Have you ever secretly wondered if the medical profession is comprised of neurotic individuals who change their mind more frequently than you change your clothes? Well, I can understand why you’d feel that way because the public is constantly barraged with mixed health messages. But why...

/ July 23, 2009
Acupuncture

Puncturing the Acupuncture Myth

Note: This is slightly revised from an article I originally wrote as a “SkepDoc” column for Skeptic magazine. It was pre-released online in eSkeptic and it has already generated a lot of comments, including “a truly amazing piece of peurile pseudo-intellectualism,” “an ad hominem attack on one form of alternative medicine so beset by poor thinking that one must come to the...

/ October 21, 2008
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