Month: July 2012

Oxygen Is Good, Even When It’s Not There

Note: This article originally appeared in Skeptical Inquirer, 28(1), 48-50 & 55, January/February 2004. I’m recycling it now because I have been at The Amazing Meeting in Las Vegas instead of home at my computer writing new posts. It’s still timely: despite multiple debunkings and FTC actions, vitamin O is still for sale. Amazon has it for $4.80 an ounce. I’m no Mark...

/ July 17, 2012

Caption this: Dr. Gorski meets Dr. Whitaker

Earlier today, I gave you the blow-by-blow description of a debate that occurred on Thursday between Dr. Steve Novella and Dr. Julian Whitaker. After that debate, I got an opportunity to “discuss” one of Dr. Whitaker’s points, specifically a scientifically illiterate graph that he had constructed. Because Dave Patton was there doing photography of the event for Michael Shermer, I suggested that...

/ July 16, 2012

Steve Novella vs. Julian Whitaker on vaccines at FreedomFest

While I and some of the others in the SBM crew were at The Amazing Meeting (TAM) in Las Vegas, our fearless leader Steve Novella got an interesting challenge: To debate Dr. Julian Whitaker about vaccines at a libertarian confab known as FreedomFest, which just so happened to be going on up the strip a piece at the same time TAM was....

/ July 16, 2012

The Spirit of St. Louis Renault

Summer time is finally here in Oregon, and I will confess that I have spent little time on blogging.  The sun is out, my kids are out of school and home from college, and really, who wants to spend their time writing when you could be on the golf course or at the beach with the kids.  I say this as a...

/ July 13, 2012

Obamacare and CAM

Practitioners of so-called “complementary and alternative medicine” currently enjoy a certain measure of government largesse in the form of state laws mandating coverage of their services by private health insurance plans. The federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (often referred to as the Affordable Care Act, or “ACA,” and sometimes as “Obamacare”) has the potential of putting a significant dent in this forced...

/ July 12, 2012

Why Do They Do Studies Like This?

A recently published study claims to have shown that a proprietary mixture of velvet bean and Chlorophytum borivilianum improves sleep quality. The journal, Integrative Medicine Insights, is online, peer-reviewed, PubMed indexed, open-access, and it charges authors $1848.00 to publish their article. It advertises editorial decisions in 3 weeks and publication in 2 weeks after acceptance. I can see two reasons why authors...

/ July 10, 2012

The future of cancer therapy?

I was contemplating writing a post along the same lines as Harriet’s post about evolutionary medicine last week, but then on Sunday morning I saw an article that piqued my interest. Sorry, Harriet, my response, if I get to it, might have to wait until next week, although we could always discuss the usefulness (versus the lack thereof) of evolutionary medicine over...

/ July 9, 2012

Testing the “individualization” of CAM treatments

One of the common claims of alternative medicine practitioners is that they individualize their treatment while conventional medicine treats all patients the same. This is nonsense on several levels, but it is also a common excuse for why randomized clinical trials cannot be performed, or cannot be viewed as reliable evidence, in evaluating some alternative therapies. However, some trials have been done...

/ July 6, 2012

Dr. Oz and Green Coffee Beans – More Weight Loss Pseudoscience

I can’t keep up with Dr. Oz. Just when I thought the latest weight loss miracle was raspberry ketone, along comes another weight loss panacea. This time, it’s green coffee beans. Eveyone knows Dr. Oz, now. Formerly a guest on Oprah, he’s got his own show which he’s built into what’s probably the biggest platform for health pseudoscience and medical quackery on...

/ July 5, 2012

GSK Pays $3 Billion Fine

The following article is reposted from NeuroLogicaBlog. Happy Independence Day to all our American readers.   The pharmaceutical giant, GlaxoSmithKline, has agreed to pay three billion dollars in fines to settle three charges of fraud brought by the FDA. This is the largest health fraud settlement in US history. What are the implications of this settlement for how the pharmaceutical industry is regulated in...

/ July 4, 2012