Tag: randomized clinical trial

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
Vinay Prasad, MD, MPH

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is definitely coming for your vaccines, part 5: VAERS and a useful idiot at the FDA

In the sadly continuing story of how Health and Human Services Secretary RFK Jr. is working to eliminate vaccines, we look at a useful idiot, Dr. Vinay Prasad, and how he is weaponizing dead children to justify making vaccines harder to approve.

/ December 1, 2025
EBM hierarchy

HHS is weaponizing evidence-based medicine to falsely portray vaccines as unsafe

Last week, HHS announced that all "new vaccines will undergo safety testing in placebo-controlled trials." Sounds good? Not so fast. This is really a deceptive weaponization of evidence-based medicine to undermine confidence in vaccines and eliminate at least some of them.

/ May 5, 2025
Donald Trump

Donald Trump bragged that “right-to-try” has saved thousands of lives. It hasn’t.

Former President Donald Trump bragged in his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention that "right-to-try" had saved "thousands of lives"? What's the real story? (Hint: Nowhere near that.)

/ July 22, 2024
RFK Jr. no saline placebo

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.

/ July 3, 2023
Cochrane Collaborative

The Cochrane mask fiasco: How the evidence-based medicine paradigm can produce misleading results

Last week, the Cochrane Collaborative was forced to walk back the conclusions of a review by Tom Jefferson et al that had been spun in the media as proving that "masks don't work." Tom Jefferson himself has been problematic about vaccines for a long time, but the rot goes deeper. What is it about the evidence-based medicine paradigm that results in misleading...

/ March 13, 2023
Ivermectin repurposing

Science-based medicine isn’t just for CAM. The case of ivermectin shows that it never was.

Another large randomized controlled trial for ivermectin showed no efficacy for the early treatment of COVID-19. This is not a surprise to science-based medicine advocates. Here's why the story of ivermectin shows that SBM isn't just for "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) —and never was.

/ April 4, 2022
Ivermectin repurposing

Ivermectin: The acupuncture of COVID-19 treatments

As high-quality evidence increasingly and resoundingly shows that ivermectin does not work against COVID-19, advocates are doing what acupuncture advocates do: Turning to lower quality "positive" studies to claim incorrectly that their favorite ineffective treatment actually does "work".

/ March 21, 2022

A New Study Finds No Benefit from Chiropractic for Infant Colic, but They’ll Keep Doing it Anyway

A new study attempted to answer the question of chiropractic's potential benefit for infant colic. It was successful, but I don't think it turned out the way the authors' hoped. Sadly, I don't think that this will change the mind of any chiropractor who treats babies.

/ July 23, 2021