BMJ
oracknows | July 14, 2015Homeopathy is quackery.
There, I've said it for the hundredth or even thousandth time, but I don't care if it's repetitive because it can't be emphasized enough times that homeopathy is The One Quackery To Rule Them All, with the possible exception of reiki and other "energy therapies." I also find it useful to make it clear right where I'm coming from right off the bat. If you're a homeopath and are offended, quite frankly, I don't care. Any "medicine" whose very precepts break multiple laws of physics and chemistry, laws that wouuld have to be proven not just wrong but spectacularly wrong…
oracknows | September 17, 2012Homeopathy is what I like to call The One Quackery To Rule Them All. Depending upon my mood, I'll use more or less of J.R.R. Tolkien's famous poem about the One Ring from The Lord of the Rings, but the point is usually made. Homeopathy is major quackery.
And it is, too. On the off chance that there's a newbie reading this who hasn't been a regular reader of this blog or other skeptical blogs and doesn't know what homeopathy is. (Regulars can skip this paragraph if they wish, but I wouldn't. It's entertaining.) Basically, homeopathy is a system of magical medicine thought up over 200 years ago…
oracknows | September 7, 2012On the antivaccine front, this year began with antivaccine hero Andrew Wakefield filing suit against investigative reporter Brian Deer, the BMJ, and Fiona Godlee (the editor of BMJ) for libel based on a series that Deer published in the BMJ outlining the evidence for Wakefield's scientific fraud in his (in)famous 1998 Lancet case series. This resulted in a massive rallying of the antivaccine troops around Wakefield, as well as temporarily making him appear relevant again after so many much-deserved humiliations and defeats, in the wake of his having had his license to practice medicine in the…
ddobbs | June 15, 2009
Photo: Tyler Hicks, via Scientific American
What if you could predict which troops are most likely to get PTSD from combat exposure -- and takes steps to either bolster them mentally or keep them out of combat situations? A new study suggests we could make a start on that right now -- and cut combat PTSD rates in half by simply keeping the least mentally and physically fit soldiers away from combat zones.
The study was part of the Millenium Study, huge, prospective study in which US Department of Defense researchers have been tracking the physical and mental health of nearly 100,000 service…