Along with Dr. R. W., I've become known for my rather vociferously expressed dismay at the ever increasing infiltration of unscientific and non-evidence-based woo in the form of "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) into academic medical centers. Well, thanks to a reader, I've seen a vision of the future of American medicine, and it's frightening. Imagine, if you will, an academic medical center where the infiltration of woo is complete, where all manner of "alternative" modalities are viewed as equal or even superior to our unfeeling and nonwholistic scientific medicine. Imagine, if…

I demand the sum of.....two MILLION visits! Muhahahahahaha! Yes, I know I did that bit before, but I liked it so much that I wanted to do it again. Sometime yesterday, this blog hit another milestone. Sometime yesterday morning, Respectful Insolence⢠recorded its 2,000,000th visitor. Unfortunately, "sometime yesterday" was while I was at work, and, due to pesky duties like meetings, I was unable to record the 2,000,000th visit for posterity, as I did for my 1,000,000th visit. That was on January 22, 2007. To reach the 1,000,000 mark took 2 years, 1 month, and 11 days. To go from 1,000,…

This is getting depressing. Yesterday, I did a brief post on the tragic story of a nine month old baby named Gloria Thomas whose father, a homeopath, put his faith in homeopathic medicines to treat her severe eczema and who as a consequence did not receive the necessary medical treatment she needed and died of massive sepsis, probably from a staph infection of her skin. It was clearly a case where faith in an irrational and unscientific system of medicine directly contributed to an unnecessary death by delaying necessary care. But misguided faith in alternative medicine is not the only kind…

Panda Bear MD has posted the second part of his series about the irrationality behind much of "alternative" (a.k.a. non-evidence-based) medicine. He makes an excellent point: At no time however, will your physicians ever promise a magic cure, a therapy that will definitively fix the problem with no ill effects leaving alone the precarious balance of your fantastically complicated body. At best they will promise good results with minimal and easily tolerated side effects. At worst the therapies they will reluctantly propose are almost as bad as the disease they will ameliorate and the subject…

Two of my favorite blog carnivals have made their regular appearance today: The History Carnival #58 (hosted by fellow ScienceBlogger Aardvarchaeology) Grand Rounds, vol. 4, no. 7 Go forth and enjoy!

Over the weekend, it appears that a post of mine, in which I included a link to a video of comic Tim Slagle doing the comedy routine that, in my never-ending effort to live up to the stereotype of the humorless skeptic that the credulous like so much, I castigated for its misrepresentations of science in the pursuit of a punchline, has been invaded by a number of "skeptics" of anthropogenic global warming. Indeed, it makes me wonder if someone e-mailed the link to my post to a Libertarian mailing list or something, given that, as of this writing, no one that I can detect has linked to the…

For those who argue that homeopathy is harmless, here's a story that shows what can happen when faith in quackery results in parents eschewing effective evdience-based medicine: NINE-MONTH-OLD Gloria Thomas was in such distress that her crying alarmed some passengers on a plane trip from India to Sydney. She had been overseas for two months receiving medical treatment, and homeopathic medication from an uncle for severe eczema. But in that time she missed two appointments which separate doctors had made for her at specialist dermatologists. In May 2002, less than 10 days after her return, she…

This is true with respect to chiropractic, anyway. Just get a load of this ad from 1922: (Click on picture for a larger image.) You know, tart this ad up with some color and better graphics, and it wouldn't be out of place today making claims like this: Fastest growing healing profession, outstripping all others. CHIROPRACTIC is today far in the lead of all other drug-less methods. In greater numbers than ever before intelligent people are seeing the light; they know that CHIROPRACTIC is practical, sane and gets results in treatment of disease. Endorsed by leading educators. Demand for…

About a month and a half ago, I discussed an e-mail that was being propagated far and wide that described the case of the mother of a 17 year old male who, or so the e-mail claimed, cured her son of stage IV melanoma using "natural means" and was supposedly thrown in maximum security prison by the Department of Child Services in California for "failing to properly care for her child." The e-mail, which was being used by an organization called Natural Solutions USA or Health Freedom USA (I was never quite sure), reproduced here, described what seemed on the surface to be a truly horrific abuse…

The latest edition of Pedatrics Grand Rounds has been posted at Aetiology. Enjoy!

I've written before about how animal rights cranks have started resorting to terroristic tactics in order to intimidate or frighten researchers into ceasing to do animal research. As you may guess, I have little but contempt for the Animal Liberation Front (is that anything like the People's Front of Judea or the Judean People's Front?) and their ilk, who routinely use lies such as the claim that no good has ever come of animal research or the utterly risible claim that we can now somehow replace the use of animals with computer or cell culture models, coupled with vandalism and intimidation…

If you think Orac's insolence doesn't live up to the name of this blog, at least when it comes to lamenting the infiltration of unscientific, non-evidence-based modalities into academic medicine, such as the use of reiki in a top academic trauma hospital, woo finding its way into the mandatory curriculum of a prestigious medical center and becoming more prevalent in the elective curriculum of others (even to the point of credulous acceptance of quackery such as homeopathy), woo being trumpeted by the largest medical student organization in the U.S., and even what I thought to be the most…

Amazing. I didn't actually expect this, but it appears that some knuckleheads have actually nominated Respectful Insolence again for the Best Medical/Health Issues Blog in the 2007 Weblog Awards, and, even more oddly, I somehow managed to be finalist. It turns out that P.Z. Myers is also a finalist in the Best Science Blog category as well. I was actually a finalist in 2005 and--shock of shocks--won the category last year. I don't really have any idea who nominated me or how I ended up being a finalist, but thanks to all. The only question is: Can I make it a repeat? It's probably too much…

Don't forget, once again the time is fast approaching. Soon yet another installment of the Skeptics' Circle will be upon us. In fact, it's less than a week away and due to land at the Holford Watch on Thursday, November 8. Skeptical bloggers, there isn't much time left for you to get your entries done and submitted. Finally, if you're a blogger and want to host an edition of the Skeptics' Circle yourself, drop me a line. For some reason, the Circle doesn't have as many hosts lined up as far into the future as I would like. Indeed, the wait to host is shorter than I can remember its ever being…

Arguing with cranks can be an extremely frustrating experience, which is why I don't do it very often anymore except on my terms on this blog. Yes, I did cut my skeptical teeth, so to speak, for several years doing just that in the totally unmoderated and wild free-for-all known as Usenet before I dipped my toe into the blogosphere on a whim one cold December afternoon, but these days blogging has gotten me far more satisfaction, visibility, and influence than I could ever have dreamed possible. Consequently, I rarely visit my old stomping grounds anymore. If you want to see the difference…

In retrospect, I feel a little guilty about last week's edition of Your Friday Dose of Woo. As a couple of commenters pointed out, the guy responsible for the woo seems as though he's a bit disturbed, as evidenced by the ransom note-style literature on his website and the news story that mentioned how his family didn't take him seriously and he was divorced. On the other hand, the woo was truly top notch. As I pointed out, it also illustrated how a woo-meister can take a single erroneous idea about human physiology and run with it far beyond what anyone would think possible. Such woo can be…

Over the summer, I got into a bit of an argument with a certain Libertarian comic named Tim Slagle who doesn't seem to accept the scientific consensus that anthropogenic global warming is happening or that it is a potentially grave problem. In a perilous bit of criticism, given that comedy often depends on saying stupid things, I deconstructed his comedy routine in which he threw all sorts of bad arguments and straw men as attacks on Al Gore. It was a routine with the old trope that "science has been wrong before," with a truly unpleasant bit of scientist-bashing thrown in for good measure.…

Despite the diatribes that appear here on a regular basis bemoaning the unscientific and sometimes dangerous claims made for so-called "alternative medicine" modalities, I'll be among the first to admit that in some cases it's not always clear what is "alternative" about some therapies. Indeed, there seems to be an intentional effort to "rebrand" some aspects of conventional medicine as being "alternative." Because these methods have a scientific rationale and at least some evidence that they work, by successfully marketing them as "alternative," woo-meisters can then point to them as…

...we need a little something as night approaches. I know just the thing: Brain-eating zombies. Given that this is the blog that conceived of the misbegotten literary (if you can call it that) device known as the Hitler Zombie, how could I not post a clip involving an actual cinematic brain-eating zombie on Halloween? (Warning: In the interest of full disclosure, this clip contains a brief and pretty well obscured topless shot and a couple of uses of the F-word.) Intelligent talking zombies who understand how to use pulleys. Now that's scary! Yes, this was a clip from one of my favorite…

Having gotten into the whole idea of blogging about peer-reviewed research yesterday and even using a spiffy new icon to denote that that's what I'm doing, originally I had planned on looking up another interesting article or pulling one from my recent reading list and blogging about it. Then, realizing that Breast Cancer Awareness Month is over after today, I happened to come across an article that reminds me of something that's appropriate for today, namely Halloween. Yes, it's that mercury maven of mavens, that tireless crusader who thinks he found that the Amish don't get autism and,…