Quackery
Respectful Insolence
Category archives for Quackery
The “success” of NCCAM grants on homeopathy
Posted by Orac on November 19, 2012 One of the great benefits of having been a blogger for nearly eight years now is that I now have a rich history of thousands of posts. True, there are the occasional posts that I wish I hadn’t written and even the occasional post that I consider to be not particularly good, but for the…
Evidence-based medicine: More than a “coin flip”
Posted by Orac on November 16, 2012 One characteristic of cranks, quacks, and pseudoscience boosters is a love-hate relationship with science. They desperately crave the respectability and validation that science confers. In the case of medicine, they want to be seen as evidence- and science-based. On the other hand, they hate science because it just won’t given them what they want: Confirmation…
One last paean to naturopathy on—where else?—The Huffington Post
Posted by Orac on November 15, 2012 It wasn’t so long ago (less than a week, actually), that I noticed what I referred to as a paean to the quackery known as naturopathy. It appeared—where else?—on that wretched hive of scum and quackery known at The Huffington Post. It was even entitled My Love Affair with Naturopathy. Not unexpectedly, this very article…
“Moneyball,” politics, and science-based medicine
Posted by Orac on November 14, 2012 Regular readers probably know that I’m into more than just science, skepticism, and promoting science-based medicine (SBM). (If they’re regular readers of my other, not-so-super-secret other project, they might also realize that they’ve seen this post before elsewhere. I had to stay out late for a work-related event and decided to tart it up and…
“Holistic” versus homeopathy versus The Secret
Posted by Orac on November 13, 2012 “Holistic.” How often do we hear that word bandied about by practitioners of “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM) or, as it’s increasingly called, “integrative medicine” (IM)? Lots. The reason is that CAM/IM practitioners seem to think they own the word. They’ve so utterly co-opted it that it has become meaningless, in the process perverting it.…
Reiki invades an operating room
Posted by Orac on November 12, 2012 I’m a scientist, but I’m also a surgeon, which means I’ve spent quite a bit of time in operating rooms. In the OR, teamwork is critical, and each member of the team should be using science- and evidence-based medicine to inform their judgment regarding what to do. If there’s one kind of practitioner in the…
Eric Merola apparently doesn’t like what Orac writes about Stanislaw Burzynski
Posted by Orac on November 10, 2012 As our great Lord Draconis Zeneca promises, besides the fantasies of filthy lucre in the minds of our opponents, there are other rewards to being one of his shills and minions besides getting to blog to my heart’s content about the pseudoscience and quackery that is “alternative” medicine. One of them is that sometimes I…
A paean to naturopathy on—where else?—The Huffington Post
Posted by Orac on November 9, 2012 If you’re a skeptic and supporter of science-based medicine (SBM), as I am, no doubt there are times when you ask yourself in exasperation, frustration, or curiosity just what the appeal of quackery is to so many people. Why do people fall for this stuff? you no doubt ask yourself at times. Certainly I do…
Stanislaw Burzynski: Slapped down by the FDA once again
Posted by Orac on November 7, 2012 I sometimes think that Stanislaw Burzynski is a lot like the Bloody Mary of folklore, or perhaps Candyman of the famous horror movie—or perhaps like a number of other legends and horror stories—in that all it seems to take for him to show up in the blogosphere again is for me to recite his hame…
The results of the unethical and misbegotten Trial to Asess Chelation Therapy (TACT) are finally revealed
Posted by Orac on November 5, 2012 Chelation therapy, in my somewhat Insolent opinion, is pure quackery. Unfortunately, it’s also one of the most common quackeries out there, used by a wide variety of practitioners for a wide variety of ailments blamed on “heavy metal toxicity.” Chelation therapy involves using chemicals that can bind to the metal ions and allow them to…
What is the role of NCCAM at the NIH? Dr. Killen tries to explain.
Posted by Orac on November 1, 2012 I’d like to publicly thank Dr. John Killen, Jr. I was looking for something to write about yesterday evening, and, just when I was beginning to despair that I might have to do another post on the lunacy that is antivaccine nonsense (even I get tired of taking on antivaccine idiocy, as regular readers know),…
And now death by Gardasil? Again, not so fast…
Posted by Orac on October 31, 2012 I guess this is in effect part two of yesterday’s post. Regular daily readers (and you are a regular daily reader, aren’t you?) will remember that yesterday I commented on the recent uptick in anti-Gardasil vaccine rhetoric coming from the antivaccine crank blog Age of Autism and other sources, in the process deconstructing speculation masquerading…
Ovarian failure caused by Gardasil? Not so fast…
Posted by Orac on October 30, 2012 Well, I’m home. AFter spending a fun-filled three days in Nashville at CSICon communing with fellow skeptics and trying to awaken them to the problem of quackademic medicine, I made it back home. There were plenty of attendees who didn’t make it back on time because flights to the East Coast were being cancelled left…
The American Medical Student Association and its promotion of woo in medical school
Posted by Orac on October 29, 2012 There’s a saying in medicine that we frequently hear when a newer, more effective therapy supplants an older therapy or an existing therapy is shown not to be as efficacious as was once thought, and it has to do about how long it takes for the use of that therapy to decline. The saying basically…
The “toxin gambit,” resurrected
Posted by Orac on October 26, 2012 Well, I’m here. That’s right. As I mentioned yesterday, I’m at CSICon. As is the case when I’m at conferences, be they skeptical conferences or professional conferences, it’s hard to predict the blogging time available. It could be a lot; it could be a little. Or it could be none. (Well, obviously it’s not none,…
The “no debate” debate, briefly revisited
Posted by Orac on October 23, 2012 Just yesterday, I commented on a typical whine from the antivaccine crew at the crank blog Age of Autism in which Dan Olmsted became indignant over being reminded that science does not support his belief that vaccines cause autism, that they don’t work, and that they are dangerous. Olmsted, clueless as ever about science, viewed…
The “no debate” debate
Posted by Orac on October 22, 2012 I like the word “manufactroversy.” It’s a lovely made up word that combines the two words “manufactured controversy” and is, to boil it down, defined as the art of creating a controversy where none really exists. In the case of science, it’s the concerted effort to make it seem as though there is a legitimate…
Quackademic medicine invades the military again
Posted by Orac on October 18, 2012 As much as I write about the infiltration of quackademic medicine into medical academia, there is one particular area that is being increasingly invaded by such quackery. It’s an area that you wouldn’t necessarily expect, although anyone who’s read The Men Who Stare at Goats might not be so shocked. Yes, I’m referring to the…
NBC chief medical correspondent Dr. Nancy Snyderman embraces quackery
Posted by Orac on October 17, 2012 I take back all those nice things I used to say about Nancy Snyderman. There’s no doubt that she “gets it” about vaccines and, for the most part, even though she does occasionally go overboard, and her understanding of the issues involved in the use of various vaccines is anything but nuanced. I used to…
Legal thuggery threatens another skeptic
Posted by Orac on October 16, 2012 I hate to admit it, but I’ve known about this story since Friday night, when I received a couple of e-mails about it. I had meant to mention it here either over the weekend or on Monday, but I’m a bit like Dug the Dog in the movie Up. Think of it this way: Squirrel!…
American Academy of Family Physicians embraces quackademic medicine
Posted by Orac on October 15, 2012 In a week and a half, Harriet Hall, Kimball Atwood, and I will be joining Eugenie C. Scott at CSICon to do a session entitled Teaching Pseudoscience in Medical (and Other) Schools. As you might imagine, we will be discussing the infiltration of pseudoscience into medical academia and medical training, a phenomenon I frequently refer…
A slightly different alternative medicine cancer cure testimonial
Posted by Orac on October 12, 2012 And now for something completely different… Well, not really. It’s a little different, but regular readers will soon recognize it as a variation on the same old theme. One topic I’ve been writing about since the very beginning of this blog is the alternative medicine cancer cure testimonial, or, more specifically, the breast cancer cure…
One more example of the price of refusing science-based cancer therapy
Posted by Orac on October 10, 2012 Another year, another Breast Cancer Awareness Month. While most people who have either been touched by breast cancer or who have a professional interest in it, the significance of Breast Cancer Awareness Month is that it is a time, well, to increase awareness and to promote breast cancer research. There is another side to Breast…
Using the lie that shaken baby syndrome is a misdiagnosis for vaccine injury to try to exonerate another accused child abuser (one last word)
Posted by Orac on October 8, 2012 On Friday, I wrote about the sort of case that outrages me every bit as much as cases of cancer quackery that lead to the death of patients. I’m referring to the case of Amanda Sadowsky, a four month old infant who died after suffering traumatic brain injuries that appeared consistent with shaken baby syndrome…
Science is quite safe from your pitiful little band…
Posted by Orac on October 4, 2012 I’m having a hard time keeping myself from laughing uproariously. I’m talking gut-wrenching belly laughs, the kind that are so intense that you have trouble catching your breath between paroxysms of laughter, the kind that threaten to force the contents of your stomach to go the wrong way, up and out. What, you may ask,…