Quackery
oracknows | May 21, 2007I hadn't planned on revisiting this topic again quite so soon, but sometimes a piece of information comes up that's so disturbing that I can't ignore it and can't justify delaying blogging about it by very long. So it is yet again with the strange and disturbing saga of dichloroacetate (DCA), the small molecular chemotherapeutic drug with a novel and scientifically interesting mechanism of action that could lead to a whole new class of chemotherapeutic agents and that has shown considerable promise in rat tumor models but has not yet been tested in humans. Not to belabor the story, which has…
oracknows | May 20, 2007It would appear that I must respectfully disagree (or be Respectfully Insolent, if you will) with fellow comic fan Scott over at Polite Dissent.
Two of my all-time favorite comics are Fantastic Four and (believe it or not, given my present day disdain for woo) Doctor Strange. Doctor Stephen Strange, for those of you not familiar with him, started out as an incredibly arrogant and greedy neurosurgeon who was involved in an auto accident in which he suffered nerve damage to his hands that impaired the fine motor control to the point where, while he could function normally in every day life, he…
oracknows | May 17, 2007Dr. R. W. asks (and answers) the question, pointing out in detail how:
Promoters of unscientific claims often reject ordinary scientific standards for experimental design and evidence.
Even government funded CAM research is troubled with serious methodologic flaws.
Research on complementary and alternative methods is conducted without regard to biologic plausibility.
The proponents and funders of alternative medicine research do not accept negative results.
Government oversight is biased in favor of complementary and alternative medicine.
He's right on all points, although he forgot that…
oracknows | May 17, 2007
When I learned of this, I had been highly tempted trot out everybody's favorite undead Führer for a little fun with the Church of Scientology's latest antics. Indeed, when you find out what I'm about to discuss, you'll see why it was a candidate for the loving chomp of his rotting jaws. Heck, I even started to do the whole Hitler zombie schtick that regular readers all know and some even love (or at least tolerate--well, most of you, anyway). As I typed away, though, I was having more and more trouble. My conscience was feeling more and more troubled. After all, I've lovingly crafted…
oracknows | May 16, 2007One of the favorite targets of pseudoscientists is the peer review system. After all, it's the system through which scientists submit their manuscripts describing their scientific findings or their grant proposals to their peers for an evaluation to determine whether they are scientifically meritorious enough to be published or to be funded. Creationists hate it. HIV/AIDS denialists hate it. Indeed, pseudoscientists and cranks of all stripes hate it. There's a reason for that, of course, namely that vigorous peer review is a major part of science that keeps pseudoscientists from attaining the…
oracknows | May 13, 2007I don't know where EoR finds this stuff, but I like the way Deborah Ross thinks when she discusses offering alternative medical practitioners alternative methods of payment. Not surprisingly, they aren't interested:
There has been much fuss this week about the 'scientific status' of homeopathy, just as there is always a fuss about 'alternative' treatments generally. Personally, I have no patience with the dismissive and often contemptuous attitude these therapies can attract, as there are many useful treatments and products on offer out there. These include:
THE ALTERNATIVE CREDIT CARD (…
oracknows | May 11, 2007Remember the SCIO? It was featured in Your Friday Dose of Woo two weeks ago. It's an amazingly woo-ey piece of woo that was just perfect for my little weekly feature.
Unfortunately, not everyone appreciates my having a little fun with it. For example, one of the woomeisters responsible for the SCIO has appeared on my blog to complain and defend Professor William Nelson, the luminary of woo who's had a hand in not one, but two pieces of woo featured in YFDoW. This woomeister, who signed his comments "Dr. D," is displeased and showed up in the comments to tell me so:
ill Nelson hasn't yet won…
oracknows | May 11, 2007I really love Life Technologyâ¢. I really do. Heck, I could spend the next several weeks mining it for topics for Your Friday Dose of Woo. The stuff there's so over-the-top that I find it hard to believe that these guys are serious. I mean, really, look at some of their products, a couple of which I've featured on YFDoW before; specifically the Ultra Advanced Psychotronic Money Magnet Professional Version 1.0⢠(a.k.a. The Ultimate in Financial Abundance Engineering Technologyâ¢) and the Tesla Purple Energy Shieldâ¢, two pieces of such amazingly tasty woo that it's pretty hard to top them.…
oracknows | May 10, 2007A common refrain among practitioners and advocates of alternative medicine is that the reason randomized clinical trials frequently fail to find any objective evidence of clinical efficacy for their favorite woo is because, in essence, science is not the right tool to evaluate whether it works. In essence, they either appeal to other ways of knowing, invoke postmodernist nonsense claiming that science is just one way of knowing that is not any better than any other ways, or both. The most outrageously absurd example of postmodernist silliness in this regard that I've ever seen was the…
oracknows | May 8, 2007Via Kevin, MD, here's a piece that almost could have been written by me:
CAM exists in an alternate universe from real medicine. It wants to be legitimate but manages to avoid the responsibilities and liability of real medical practice. As most CAM treats nebulous symptoms with equally nebulous modalities, there is no measurable standard for efficacy of any of the treatments. Acupuncturists, for example, diagnose perturbations of "qi," a mystical life force which apart from serving as the basis for Star Wars has no physiological equivalent and cannot be measured in any way except through…
oracknows | May 4, 2007Everybody (well, mostly everybody) learns in science and physics class the Three Laws of Thermodynamics:
Energy cannot be created or destroyed, meaning that the increase in the internal energy of a thermodynamic system is equal to the amount of heat energy added to the system minus the work done by the system on the surroundings.
The entropy of an isolated system not in equilibrium will tend to increase over time, approaching a maximum value at equilibrium.
As temperature approaches absolute zero, the entropy of a system approaches a constant.
These three laws pretty much describe the…
oracknows | May 3, 2007You may remember how, almost in passing as part of a longer post, I mentioned how much cranks can't stand critics of theirs who write under a pseudonym and try to out them at every opportunity. Indeed, one of the biggest cranks of all, J.B. Handley, the man whose mantra used to be that autism is nothing more than a misdiagnosis for mercury poisoning but who is now backpedaling furiously to blame "live viruses" and "toxic loads," tried to do just that the other day in the comments of this post (as if I'd let that happen on my own blog).
Not all outing is always bad. Kevin Leitch, in fact, has…
oracknows | May 2, 2007Dr. Steven Novella, an academic neurologist, President of the New England Skeptical Society, and organizer of what's become my favorite skeptical podcast, The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, took the time to weigh in on the Nature Neuroscience article that I discussed the other day and that engendered dozens of comments, as posts about antivaccination irrationality tend to do around here.
Besides my being interested in what a neurologist has to say about these issues, the reason that I want to bring your attention to his article is because he issues a clarion call to arms for those who…
oracknows | May 2, 2007One amusing little tidbit that came out of my recent post about how the mercury militia tries to intimidate scientists who are willing to speak out against the antivaccination wingnuttery is that the Generation Rescue website, home of J. B. Handley and his merry band of mercury militia chelation junkies, has undergone a makeover. Gone is the dogmatic site that proclaimed that autism and autism spectrum disorders are all "misdiagnoses" for mercury poisoning. Here now is a kinder, gentler Generation Rescue site, although it's still chock full of the same looniness that you've come to expect…
oracknows | May 2, 2007I had come across a rather amusing mea culpa by GruntDoc in which, while discussing an amazingly inappropriate notice regarding guidelines for emergency room chiropractic reimbursement, he admits to having in the past referred our best and bravest to chiropractors. I can understand why he did it, given the circumstances he described. However, what bothered me was this statement:
In my six-plus years of being on-call in the hospital emergency department (ED), I have seen numerous ED physicians gain familiarity with the indications for chiropractic consultation. I have enjoyed seeing the…
oracknows | April 30, 2007As a male, this bit of woo from Serbia causes me pain just to contemplate it. I'm not sure if it's true or not because--well--I have a hard time believing that anybody can be this stupid. It has the whiff of urban legend about it. However, one underestimates the stupidity of men in their quest to solve sexual problems; so it's possible that this is true. Just don't tell Bora; I don't know if he could stand that this happened in Serbia, if it actually happened:
A Serbian man who went to a witchdoctor in search of a cure for premature ejaculation rather foolishly took the shaman's advice, viz:…
oracknows | April 30, 2007Now here's something you don't see every day. Nature Neuroscience has weighed in about the pseudoscience that claims that mercury causes autism. Based on British experience with animal rights activists, it points out a parallel that I hadn't considered before:
The idea that autism is caused by vaccination is influencing public policy, even though rigorous studies do not support this hypothesis. Legislators are right to take into account the concerns of parent groups and others directly affected by autism, but policy decisions should be based on hard evidence rather than anxiety. More…
oracknows | April 27, 2007I've said it once before, but this week's woo compels me to say it again: I happen to love gadgets.
I've been a bit of a technogeek since very early on in my life, with a lot of the things that go along with it, including a major interest in science fiction, awkwardness around the opposite sex, When at their best, gadgets can do things that need to be done and, if well designed, can do them with panache, making drudgery almost fun Then of course, there's the almost Dilbert-like joy males into technogeekery have in one-upping each other, almost like the surgeons I described yesterday one-…
oracknows | April 26, 2007Just when I start to think that maybe, just maybe, I could stop worrying and learn to love the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM, with apologies to Stanley Kubrick and Peter Sellers), damn if it doesn't go and do something that renews my cynicism about the entire Center. This time around, Dr. RW has turned me on to a proposed project that leaves me scratching my head, Omics and Variable Responses to CAM: Secondary Analysis of CAM Clinical Trials.
Given the nature of the woo to be studied, my first inclination was to start making light of the whole "oooommmmm"-…
oracknows | April 24, 2007Given all the verbiage (see the link list below) about dichloroacetate (DCA) that I've spewed into the blogosphere decrying the hijacking of a promising cancer therapy by conspiracy-mongers (it's the cancer cure "big pharma" is keeping from you because they can't make money on it) and opportunistic entrepreneurs like Jim Tassanno preying on the desperation of terminally ill cancer patients, I had thought that I would be taking a break on the topic for a while. But wouldn't you know it? My blogging colleague Abel at Terra Sigillata unearthed another fascinating article on the effects of this…