Quackery
oracknows | August 6, 2013As supporters of science-based medicine know, in the woo-sphere, there is only One True Cause of Autism, and that is vaccines. At least, so it would seem. The idea that vaccines cause autism is based largely on anecdotes tinged with confirmation bias and selective memory mixed with a massive confusing of correlation with causation whereby the increase in autism prevalence over the last twenty years appears to correlate with an expansion of the vaccine schedule. Of course, as skeptics know, correlation does not necessarily equal causation, and I've often asked the question why it has to be the…
oracknows | August 6, 2013In medical school, or so we're told, aspiring young doctors are taught the fundamentals of medicine. What we science-based physicians usually mean by "fundamentals" includes the basic science necessary to understand human health and disease, the mechanism by which human disease develops, and the basics of how to treat it. We also learn a way of thinking about diagnosis and treatment, a systematic approach to differential diagnosis and how to hone in on a diagnosis based on history, physical findings, and imaging and laboratory tests. Fundamentals are important in any profession. Being a…
oracknows | August 4, 2013Here we go again.
The "Holy Grail" (well, a "holy grail") of the antivaccine movement is to have a "vaccinated versus unvaccinated" study performed, or, as it's frequently abbreviated a "vaxed verus unvaxed" study. They believe that such a study will confirm their fixed belief that vaccines are the root of nearly all health issues children suffer today, particularly autism and autism spectrum disorders. In particular, they believe that a "vaxed versus unvaxed" study would demonstrate once and for all that vaccines are the cause of the "autism epidemic." Hilariously, a few years back, the…
oracknows | August 1, 2013After a brief foray yesterday into discussing atheism, tone deafness, and the Holocaust (how's that for an odd combination?), I'm ready to get back to more—shall we say?—conventional topics. One topic that's been popping up at that other wretched hive of scum and antivaccine quackery (one of the ones other than Age of Autism) reveals something about the antivaccine movement that I find educational. Specifically, it has to do with how, once a parent has drunk deeply of the antivaccine Kool Aid, she behaves in a rather cult-like manner. I'll show you what I mean, and the post that best…
oracknows | July 29, 2013You might find this hard to believe, but sometimes I find the antivaccine crank blog Age of Autism to be useful. Obviously, I don't find it useful in the same way that its editors think it is useful. Those paragons of the arrogance of ignorance and fetishism of hatred of science-based medicine don't actually teach me anything about vaccines and autism. The torrents of pseudoscience, quackery, conspiracy mongering, and hostility do, however, serve their purpose. They keep my finger on the pulse of the "autism biomed" movement and what the latest "autism biomed" quackery du jour is. It looks…
oracknows | July 28, 2013One of the great things about this blog is the community that has built itself up over the last eight and a half years of this blog's existence. It's a truly amazing an humbling thing to me. I can't believe that such an incredibly smart and talented bunch of advocates, gadflies, and quackbusters. True, I've also had my share of trolls, most frequently of the antivaccine variety, but you guys all take care of them so well that I only seldom feel the need to intervene myself. That's why, from time to time, I like to try to intentionally (rather than unintentionally) spark a bit of conversation…
oracknows | July 26, 2013Like yesterday's post, this will be a post that references our favorite dubious cancer doctor Stanislaw Burzynski but is not primarily about him. However, given the nature of the subject matter, it is impossible not to think of Burzynski, as comparisons are inevitable. Whereas yesterday all we were dealing with was a rather amusing "award" that Stanislaw Burzynski was awarded by a quack who had somehow conned a prominent Cardinal to give the Church's imprimatur on a Catholic medical order he wanted to resurrect to get other quacks to join, this week we're dealing with a serious subject:…
oracknows | July 24, 2013This is a post that is about Stanislaw Burzynski but not about Stanislaw Burzynski. Obviously, regular readers are more than aware who Stanislaw Burzynski is, but even though I just blogged about him a few days ago, I still feel obligated to recount briefly who he is, for the benefit of readers who might have arrived here through Google searches or other means. Stanislaw Burzynski is a famous "cancer doctor" (I use scare quotes because he is not an oncologist and has no clinical training in medical oncology yet practices as a medical oncologist) who discovered something he called "…
oracknows | July 24, 2013It's hard to believe that it's been nearly two years since I first noticed that a board certification in quackery was in the works and appeared to be nearly ready to go. I'm referring, of course, to Andrew Weil's effort to create a board certification in so-called "integrative medicine," better known to those of us on the science-based side of medicine as integrating quackery and pseudoscience with real medicine. Since it's been so long since I last addressed this issue, it's probably worth a brief recap. Basically, back in 2011, Andrew Weil and his Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine (…
oracknows | July 22, 2013Mike Adams (a.k.a. the "Health Ranger") has been a regular blog topic for several years now. There are many reasons for this, not the least of which is that, among supporters of quackery, no one quite brings the crazy home the way Mike Adams does, be it writing antivaccine rap songs, abusing dead celebrities by claiming they would have survived if only they had used whatever quackery Adams supported at the time or painting them as victims of big pharma, or conspiracy mongering on a level that make Alex Jones blush. Truly, Mikey has a special talent among woo-meisters. Joe Mercola might have…
oracknows | July 18, 2013I've often (perhaps too often) referred to homeopathy as The One Quackery To Rule Them All. If not homeopathy, what other quackery would rule? Homeopathy is, after all, the perfect quackery. Most of its most "potent" remedies are nothing more than water, because homeopaths believe that the more a solution is serially diluted (with succussion, or vigorous shaking, between each serial dilution), the more potent it becomes, and frequently dilute their solutions far beyond the point where it is likely that there is even one molecule of the original substance in the resulting homeopathic dilution…
oracknows | July 17, 2013Sometimes, the mainstream press gets it (mostly) right, and Jake Tapper actually got it right in a report on CNN yesterday about Jenny McCarthy's having been hired by ABC as a regular on The View. Although I don't like how Jake Tapper describes Generation Rescue as an "autism organization" (it is clearly an antivaccine group), and he perhaps didn't rebut Jenny's ludicrous claim that she is "not antivaccine" but rather "pro-safe vaccine" (seriously, he showed McCarthy's 2008 antivaccine protest in Washington and didn't even pick the most inflammatory signs as a counterpoint to McCarthy's…
oracknows | July 15, 2013Sometimes, as I sit down to write a blog post, I have no idea what I'm going to write about at first. Fortunately, it's rare that I truly have zero idea what I'm going to write about. Usually, there are options, and I don't know which one I'm going to pick. Sometimes, however, something happens that demands that I write about it. Either that, or it's something that I know my readers will want me to write about and will be disappointed if I do not. Unfortunately, in this case, the timing is such that there's been nearly a full day since the announcement of this particularly stupid decision (…
oracknows | July 12, 2013Greetings, everyone. I realize that I, your host—is that anything like, "I, Tim Bolen"?—have been remiss in not providing the expected daily 2,000 word magnum opus. However, I have been busy plotting with our Lord and Master, Lord Draconis Zeneca. Our plans for world domination and the utter destruction of all "natural" cures are percolating nicely, and I shall be back to begin implementing them next week. In the mean time, the best way to hide our nefarious plans is in plain site; so let's have an open thread here to continue to plot!
oracknows | July 11, 2013Well, I'm here at TAM. I had a great time last night meeting up with old friends, although, thanks to the time difference between Eastern time and Las Vegas, combined with my having to give a talk today, I was forced to retire at an early 11 AM (which, of course, felt to me like 2 AM).
As you might imagine, blogging will be light, because I still have to put the finishing touches on my talk for Saturday and take in all the skeptic-y goodness at TAM, but I can't resist this little tidbit. It's a video I came across the other day that brings a whole new meaning to the term "chiroquacktic."…
oracknows | July 10, 2013Like Steve, I'm off to The Amazing Meeting today. I don't know how much I'll be posting, but, as Han Solo so famously said, "Hey, it's me." I'm sure I won't be able to resist. In any case, I'll be taking part in the Science-Based Medicine workshop tomorrow, and, for the first time ever, I'll be giving a talk on the main stage on Saturday, as half of a tag team with Bob Blaskiewicz slicing and dicing our favorite cancer doctor Stanislaw Burzynski. That will be followed by a panel on—what else?—science-based medicine and how to take on the cranks, quacks, and dubious in medicine.
In any case,…
oracknows | July 8, 2013I don't know why I'm interested in this, to the point where I'm on my sixth post about it since February. I sometimes even ask myself that very question, because taking an admittedly somewhat perverse interest in the internecine feuds among antivaccinationists. Maybe it's a bit of schadenfreude. Maybe it's just me. Whatever the reason, the ongoing feud between Jake "Boy Wonder" Crosby and his former mentors and allies in the antivaccine movement keeps bringing me back for more, as it did last week after a couple of months away. Maybe it's because when the antivaccine movement is fighting…
oracknows | July 7, 2013Since I've been on a bit of a roll with respect to acupuncture over the last week or so, I thought I'd just round out the trilogy with one more post. One myth that acupuncture apologists like to promote relentlessly is that acupuncture is completely harmless, that it almost never causes complications or problems. While it's true that acupuncture is relatively safe, it still involves sticking needles into the skin, and, given that, it would be delusional to think that there couldn't be injury caused by that. Rarely, however, have I seen a story like this from Canada reported in the National…
oracknows | July 3, 2013Here we go again.
Oh, well. These things come in waves, and sometimes I have theme weeks. Right now, this week appears to be developing into a week of quackademic medicine involving dubious acupuncture studies. Yesterday, it was acupuncture for lymphedema after breast cancer surgery, a study coming right about what is rapidly becoming the Barad-dûr of cancer quackademia, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. How a hospital that is so awesome in every other way can have such a blind spot bigger than the Eye of Sauron, I don't know, but it does, and the result is a steady stream of…
oracknows | July 2, 2013Lymphedema is a complication of breast cancer surgery that all surgeons who do breast surgery detest. Patients, of course, detest it even more. The limb swelling that is the primary symptom of lymphedema comes about because surgery on the axillary lymph nodes (the lymph nodes under the arm) that is part and parcel of surgery for breast cancer can interrupt lymph vessels and cause backup of lymph fluid in the affected arm. This backup has consequences, including skin changes, a tendency towards infections, and, in extreme cases, elephantiasis (which is, fortunately, rarely seen these days as a…