February 15, 2012
It's been a while since I mentioned Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski, the Houston doctor who has somehow managed over the last thirty-plus years to treat cancer patients with something he calls "antineoplastons" without ever actually producing strong evidence that they actually cure patients, increase the…
February 14, 2012
One of the most potent strategies used by promoters of "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM)--or, as its proponents like to call it these days, "integrative medicine" (IM)--is in essence an argumentum ad populum; i.e., an appeal to popularity. Specifically, they like to use the variant of…
February 13, 2012
As I survey the lack of reason that infests--nay, permeates every fiber of--my country, sometimes I despair. Whether it's because of the freak fest that the race for the Republican nomination has become, with each candidate seemingly battling to prove he can bring home the crazier crazy than any…
February 12, 2012
If there's one form of so-called "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) that I find more tolerable than most, it's massage therapy. The reason, of course, is that, whatever else anyone claims about massage, there's no doubt that it feels good.
All too often, however, massage therapists ruin…
February 10, 2012
Work called last night. (It happens.) Basically, I had two deadlines for two big things (finishing reviewing the grants assigned to me for study section and a major writeup for a project for my job). Unfortunately, both of them were today. I realized as I perused old posts that I hadn't reposted…
February 8, 2012
There are times when I want to fall down on my knees and give thanks for certain cranks. I mean, where would my blogging material come from, were it not for antivaccine loons, quacks, cranks, creationists, and animal rights terrorists providing me with an unending stream of blog fodder? Were they…
February 7, 2012
I was going to write about that article about massage therapy and the gene expression changes it causes, but when I went to look up the actual paper and found out, to my great disappointment, that our institution still doesn't have a subscription to the journal in which it was published. So, while…
February 6, 2012
Way back in the day, when I first encountered antivaccine views in that wretched Usenet swamp of pseudoscience, antiscience, and quackery known as misc.health.alternative, there was one particular antivaccine lie that disturbed me more than just about any other. No, it wasn't the claim that…
February 5, 2012
It's amazing how fast six months can pass, isn't it? Well, almost six months, anyway, as it was five and a half months ago that I wrote about a particularly execrable example of quackademic medicine in the form of a study that actually looked at an "energy healing" modality known as "energy…
February 3, 2012
A couple of weeks ago, I made the observation that there seems to have been a--shall we say?--realignment in one of the central arguments that proponents of "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) and "integrative medicine" (IM) make. Back in the day (say, a few years ago), such CAM…
February 2, 2012
Since I wrote about a man who is arguably the biggest seller of quackery on the Internet, namely Joe Mercola, yesterday, I thought I'd turn my attention to someone who is arguably another of the biggest promoters of quackery on the Internet, namely Mike Adams of NaturalNews.com. If Joe Mercola is…
February 1, 2012
For as many benefits as the Internet and the web have brought us in the last two decades, there are also significant downsides. I could go into all the societal changes brought about by the proliferation of this new technology, not the least of which (to me, at least) is the newfound ability of…
January 31, 2012
Here's a rare bit of good news on the regulatory front. It turns out that Representative Dan Burton (R-IN) has finally decided to retire:
So Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.) is finally retiring, after two decades in Congress. He's got a notable record of craziness, having doggedly pursued President Bill…
January 30, 2012
One of the most common retorts that antivaccine activists like to make, usually in the most wounded, self-righteous tone with the most wounded, disgusted expression on their faces that they can manage, is that they are "not antivaccine but rather pro-safe vaccine." There may be a tiny minority of…
January 29, 2012
It's rare that I have much in the way of reluctance to leap into writing about a topic. Any regular reader of this blog should know this to be true, given the topics I regularly take on and how often my writing draws flak my way from various proponents of quackery and pseudoscience, in particular…
January 27, 2012
In the more than a decade since I first discovered, to my shock, that there are actual people out there who not only don't believe that vaccines are safe despite overwhelming evidence that they are but in fact believe that they don't work and are dangerous, I thought I had seen every antivaccine…
January 25, 2012
It's been nearly a year since I last discussed a most unusual malady. Part of the reason is that the opportunity to discuss it hasn't occurred recently; usually I need some spark or incident to "inspire" me to write about something, and there just hasn't been any Morgellons news that's caught my…
January 25, 2012
Ha! I must admit, I've said probably about 50% of these things at one time or another, maybe more:
Hmmmm. Maybe I need to come up with new "shit."
Oh, and, by the way, I've been mentioned on PZ's blog more times than I can remember over the last seven years. So there! (Oh, wait. Does that mean PZ…
January 24, 2012
If there's one thing about homeopaths, it's that they're indefatigable in their dedication to their unique brand of pseudoscience. They're also endlessly protean in their ability to induce their explanations for how homeopathy is supposed to "work" to evolve into endless forms not so beautiful. If…
January 23, 2012
I've been an observer and student of the antivaccine movement for nearly a decade now, although my intensive education began almost seven years ago, in early 2005, not long after I started blogging. It was then that I first encountered several "luminaries" of the antivaccine movement both…
January 23, 2012
I was disturbed several months ago when I learned that the director of the National Institutes of Health, Francis Collins, had agreed to be the keynote speaker at the Eight International Society for Integrative Oncology Conference in Cleveland, OH. I say "doubly" disturbed because it disturbed me…
January 19, 2012
It's a new year, but some topics remain the same. One of these is the case of the highly dubious cancer doctor named Stanislaw Burzynski who claims to have discovered anticancer compounds in the blood known as antineoplastons, conducts "clinical trials" for which he charges patients and whose…
January 18, 2012
Every so often, I come across a bit of antivaccine idiocy that's so amazingly idiotic, such a--shall we say?--target-rich environment that it's catnip to a cat. I just can't resist it, even when there are other topics and subjects out there that have backed up over the last few days and I want to…
January 18, 2012
One of my complaints about academic medicine is that, all too often, its practitioners seem unwilling to take risks to combat the misinformation and lies of the antivaccine movement. So kudos are indicated for Dr. Claire McCarthy at Children's Hospital Boston for her blog post Unencumbered by facts…
January 17, 2012
I had been planning on either discussing a study or analyzing another cancer cure testimonial, but things have been (mostly) too serious around the ol' blog the last few days. What with depressing posts about the return of whooping cough thanks to antivaccine idiocy, more evidence that Andrew…
January 17, 2012
Last week, I wrote about how advocates of "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) or "integtrative medicine" (IM), having failed to demonstrate efficacy for the vast majority of the unscientific, anti-scientific, and/or pseudosciencitific treatment modalities, many based on prescientific…
January 16, 2012
The other day, I noted a contrast between certain parts of the developed world (namely, Europe) where, thanks to fears of the MMR vaccine stoked by Andrew Wakefield and the credulous and sensationalistic British press, MMR uptake rates have fallen and, predictably, measles incidence has skyrocketed…
January 14, 2012
In deciding to sue Brian Deer, Fiona Godlee, and the BMJ for Brian Deer's BMJ article about his scientific fraud a year ago, Andrew Wakefield was clearly grabbing for publicity, seeking to fire up his supporters (which he's largely succeeded in doing), and trying to make himself relevent again…
January 13, 2012
It's funny, but it's only been one week since I expressed extreme skepticism that that wretched hive of scum and quackery, The Huffington Post, had reformed itself. The reason, of course, was that HuffPo had announced that it was starting a science section. Even though on the surface it seemed that…
January 11, 2012
For all the good things about my life there are, there is one bad thing, and that was that I was born so that I reached high school age right at the height of the disco era. At least, that's the way I viewed it at the time because at the time, like many teenaged boys of that era, particularly in…
