quackademia
oracknows | September 20, 2016One of the most pernicious changes in medicine that’s occurred over the last 25 years or so is the infiltration of what I like to refer to as “quackademic medicine.” It’s a term that was, as far as I know, coined by Dr. Robert W. Donnell in 2009 to describe the infiltration of pseudoscience and quackery into medical schools and academic medical centers under the mantle of “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM), now more commonly referred to as “integrative medicine. However, over the years, I’ve embraced the term to describe the “integration” of quackery and pseudoscience into…
oracknows | June 27, 2016I’ve been writing about this topic so long—ever since the very beginning of this blog—that it seems as though I’ve always been doing it even though this blog has been in existence only 11 years and I didn’t really come to appreciate the problem until after I had started this blog. No, I’m not referring to the antivaccine movement, which is another longstanding concern of mine. This time, I’m referring to what I like to refer to as “quackademic medicine,” defined as the infiltration of unscientific and pseudoscientific medicine into medical academia. Indeed, there was a time when I tried to…
oracknows | June 23, 2016A week ago, I wrote about an example of one of the most common topics on this blog, the infiltration of pseudoscientific medicine and outright fantasy into academic medicine, a trend I like to refer to as quackademic medicine. The institution was George Washington University, and the dubious intervention was something called the MEND™ Protocol, which is sold as a treatment for Alzheimer’s disease by Muses Labs. As I described, it’s a protocol that appears to rely on a proprietary computer algorithm of some kind that, according to Muses Labs, produces a “personalized” treatment plan for…
oracknows | June 17, 2016A recurring theme of this blog is to shine a light on what I like to call “quackademic medicine.” I didn’t invent the term, but I’ve made it mine. Basically, quackademic medicine is a term that very aptly describes what’s going on in far too many academic medical centers these days, which is the infiltration of pseudoscientific medicine and outright quackery in the form of “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM). Of course, the more recent term for CAM is now “integrative medicine,” which was coined to imply the “integration” of alternative medicine with science-based medicine as…
oracknows | July 6, 2015Aside from deconstructing the misinformation and pseudoscience of the antivaccine movement, another of the top three or so topics I routinely discuss here is the infiltration of pseudoscience into medicine. In particular, I've found and discussed more examples than I can possibly remember of what I like to call quackademic medicine, defined as the infiltration of quackery into academic medicine. This quackery mainly insinuates its way into medical schools and academic medical centers through the emerging specialty known as "integrative medicine," which used to be called "complementary and…
oracknows | October 14, 2014
A common topic that I’ve written about since the very beginning of this blog is the infiltration of quackery into what were formerly bastions of science-based medicine. Most recently, I lamented just how far this process has progressed at the Cleveland Clinic, as evidenced by its recent opening of a clinic devoted to the quackery that is functional medicine and, not long before that, its opening a clinic run by a dubious naturopath practicing traditional Chinese medicine. That’s not even counting its long-standing credulous promotion of the faith healing known as reiki and the use of…
oracknows | October 8, 2014
Quackery has been steadily infiltrating academic medicine for at least two decades now in the form of what was once called “complementary and alternative medicine” but is now more commonly referred to as “integrative medicine.” Of course, as I’ve written many times before, what “integrative medicine” really means is the “integration” of quackery with science- and evidence-based medicine, to the detriment of SBM. As my good bud Mark Crislip once put it, “integrating” cow pie with apple pie does not improve the apple pie. Yet that is what’s going on in medical academia these days—with a…
oracknows | September 22, 2014
Quackery has been steadily infiltrating academic medicine for at least two decades now in the form of what was once called “complementary and alternative medicine” but is now more commonly referred to as “integrative medicine.” Of course, as I’ve written many times before, what “integrative medicine” really means is the “integration” of quackery with science- and evidence-based medicine, to the detriment of SBM. As my good bud Mark Crislip once put it, “integrating” cow pie with apple pie does not make the apple pie better. Yet that is what’s going on in medical academia these days—witha…
oracknows | March 27, 2014Note: I was busy doing something last night that left me no time to compose any fresh Insolence, which will become apparent by this weekend. In the meantime, however, I'm betting quite a few of you haven't seen this before, and those who have might want to discuss it further in a different environment.
Quackademic medicine.
I love that term, because it succinctly describes the infiltration of pseudoscientific medicine into medical academia. As I've said many times, I wish I had been the one to coin the phrase, but I wasn't. To the best of my ability to determine, I first picked it up from Dr…
oracknows | February 9, 2014There are certain things that can happen that are the equivalent of the Bat Signal to me; that is, if you can swallow the idea of me being in any way like Bruce Wayne. Call them the Cancer Signal, if you will. When I see the Cancer Signal, I know that I have to head down to the Cancer Cave—wait a minute, that doesn't sound right. Scratch that. In any caes, there are certain studies or stories that basically demand my attention and say, "Blog me, Orac! Blog me right now!!!" Either that, or they're studies that capture my readers' attention, leading them to e-mail me or Tweet at me plaintive…