clinical trials
Respectful Insolence
Tag archives for clinical trials
In which Orac gets even more “shrill and brutish” about chelation therapy and TACT
Posted by Orac on April 10, 2013 If there’s one thing that a certain subset of people who view themselves as reasonable and science-based don’t like, it’s harshness: Harshness in criticism, harshness in discussion, or—horror of horrors!—anything they view as “incivility.” That’s all well and good as far as it goes, but the problem is that sometimes there are things that demand…
A founding father of quackademic medicine speaks
Posted by Orac on March 27, 2013 It’s been a while since I’ve written about Brian Berman. We first met him when he somehow managed to insinuate a “case report” of chronic low back pain into The New England Journal of Medicine in which he recommended acupuncture for this patient. Dr. Berman also happens to be a founder of quackademic medicine on…
Stanislaw Burzynski versus regulations protecting human research subjects, revisited
Posted by Orac on March 26, 2013 Here we go again. Every time I think I can get away from this topic for a while, I get sucked back in. Indeed, it seems that hardly a week can go by when I don’t find myself pulled inexorably back to this horrible, horrible clinic and what I consider to be the abuses of…
An excellent explanation of how dubious Stanislaw Burzynski’s activities are
Posted by Orac on January 28, 2013 The weekend was busy, and I was working on grants, which meant that I could only come up with one post of Orac-style length and depth. Sadly, it wasn’t for this blog. Fortunately, C0nc0rdance came to the rescue with a must-watch video about our old friend Stanislaw Burzynski. He’s the guy who claims to treat…
More credulous reporting on placebo effects
Posted by Orac on January 16, 2013 Now that Trine Tsouderos no longer works for the Chicago Tribune, there aren’t that many reliable generalist medical/science reporters around any more. For example, here in the U.S. there’s Marilyn Marchionne at the AP, Gina Kolata of the New York Times, and then there’s Sharon Begley, who used to be at Newsweek but is now…
In which David Freedman criticizes health journalism and simultaneously destroys my irony meter
Posted by Orac on January 10, 2013 About a year and a half ago, I applied a heapin’ helpin’ of not-so-Respectful Insolence to a a clueless article about the the “triumph” of New Age medicine. The article channeled the worst fallacies of apologists for alternative medicine. Basically, its whole idea appeared to be that, even if most of “complementary and alternative medicine”…
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…
Our pharma overlords will be displeased…
Posted by Orac on September 27, 2012 There’s an oft-quoted saying that’s become a bit of a cliché among skeptics that goes something like this: There are two kinds of medicine: medicine that’s been proven scientifically to work, and medicine that hasn’t. This is then often followed up with a rhetorical question and its answer: What do call “alternative medicine” that’s been…
Stanislaw Burzynski versus regulations protecting human research subjects
Posted by Orac on August 16, 2012 It’s been a long time, been a long time, been a long lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely time. Well, not really, although it has been a while since I’ve discussed Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski. Specifically, I last dedicated a post to him following the death of one of his famous patients, Billie Bainbridge, who incidentally had become…
Patient-led “clinical trials” versus clinical research (2012 edition)
Posted by Orac on August 2, 2012 Dying of cancer can be a horrible way to go, but as a cancer specialist I sometimes forget that there are diseases that are equally, if not more, horrible. One that always comes to mind is amyotropic lateral sclerosis (ALS), more commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. It is a motor neuron disease whose clinical…
I’d rather have a free bottle in front of me than a prefrontal lobotomy
Posted by Orac on June 1, 2012 I’ve pointed out before that pover the last couple of years I’ve become a bit of a fan of old time radio, having discovered Radio Classics on Sirius XM Radio. I don’t remember how I discovered it, but I rapidly became hooked on shows like Suspense, Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, The Whistler, Gunsmoke, Dragnet, The…
Dichloroacetate (DCA) and cancer: Déjà vu all over again
Posted by Orac on May 17, 2010 Late last week, a crank I hadn’t heard from in a while showed up in my comments. I’m referring to DaveScot, who normally was known for promoting anti-evolution rhetoric in the service of the pseudoscience known as “intelligent design” creationism. This is what he said: Hi Orac, terrasig suggested you do a followup article on…
Studying homeopathy in Third World countries, revisited
Posted by Orac on January 19, 2010 I’d like to start this post by thanking a commenter named Paul Grenville. He provided me with this blogging material and, indeed, may have supplied me with material for two blog posts. He did it by showing up in an old post about a homoepath named Jeremy Sherr, who has been bringing woo to the…
Nicholas Gonzalez’ response to the failed trial of the Gonzalez protocol: Disingenuous nonsense
Posted by Orac on September 17, 2009 Pity poor Nick Gonzalez. Sorry, I couldn’t resist. After having used the same line when discussing the hugely enjoyable humiliation of the Godfather of HIV/AIDS denialism, Peter Duesberg, I couldn’t resist using the same line to introduce my response to Dr. Gonzalez’s woo-ful whine in response to the publication of the disastrous (for him and…