Tag: quackery
Alternative cancer clinics, distrust of medicine, and MAHA
Yesterday's New York Times featured an article about a man with terminal lung cancer who was enticed to chase cures that didn't exist. He died before the pandemic. Will MAHA turbocharge this sort of quackery in the US?
The metastasis hoax?
An anonymous blogger cites a virus denier who claims that our understanding of the mechanisms of cancer metastasis is a "hoax." I cringe but cannot resist. Damn.
Acupuncture for Heart Attacks and more State-Sanctioned Pseudoscience
States default to a private organization run by acupuncturists and TCM practitioners to vet continuing education courses, with predictable results.
A blast from the past: The “interstitium,” the inspiration for that recent awful NYT acupuncture article
I'm on vacation this week and decided to repost a 2018 article that I had written for my other blog (but never published on SBM) that's oddly relevant to the SBM post last week about that awful NYT acupuncture article. Meet the introduction of the "interstitium" in acupuncture, complete with a major Deepak Chopra connection!
More credulous nonsense about acupuncture, this time from National Geographic
PNAS recently published credulous nonsense about acupuncture so bad that I thought it couldn't be topped. "Hold my beer!" cried National Geographic, as it proceeded to top PNAS.
The myth of the magically powerful placebo returns
It's been a long time since I've written about the deceptive narratives around placebos promoted by supporters of alternative medicine. Unfortunately, a new article claiming placebos can work as well as "real medicine" is making the rounds on social media. Here we go again.
One year of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as HHS Secretary: The Lancet reacts, and so do I
Editors of The Lancet published an op-ed decrying RFK Jr.'s one year of failure at HHS. They're correct about RFK Jr, but they are not blameless in what has happened.
MAHA: Everything old is new again, except this time antiscience cranks (like Stanislaw Burzynski) are in charge
Returning from my hiatus, I couldn't decide on a specific new topic, mainly because so much bad stuff happened in my absence. So, in this post I back up a bit to reflect on how RFK Jr.'s "make America healthy again" is nothing new. What is new is that the antiscience-cranks are in charge.
The Red Marks of Pseudo-Medicine: Gua Sha
Claiming that an inflammatory response to injury is inherently therapeutic is a massive leap of faith.
Legislative Alchemy: “Naturopathic Doctor” licensing is bad medicine for Florida
Bad medicine, bad laws, bad choice