Month: August 2012

Questioning Whether Psychotherapy and Support Groups Extend the Lives of Cancer Patients

What a wonderful world it would be if  cancer patients could  extend their survival time by mobilizing their immune systems by eating the right foods, practicing yoga, and venting their emotions in a support group. The idea that patients can enlist their immune systems to fight the progression of cancer is deeply entrenched in psychosomatic medicine and the imagination of the lay...

/ August 31, 2012

Rejecting cancer treatment: What are the consequences?

There have been several studies of people who have refused scientific treatments for cancer. The results have not been good.

/ August 30, 2012

The Power of Replication – Bems Psi Research

I love reading quotes by the likes of Karl Popper in the scientific literature. A recent replication of Bem’s infamous psi research, Feeling the Future, gives us this quote: Popper (1959/2002) defined a scientifically true effect as that “which can be regularly reproduced by anyone who carries out the appropriate experiment in the way prescribed.” The paper is the latest replication of Daryl Bem’s...

/ August 29, 2012

Andrew Weil’s Seasonal Supplements

Dr. Andrew Weil has teamed with Innate Response Formulas to develop a series of seminars and a line of products for “seasonally appropriate integrative strategies.” Seasonal Therapeutics is a system for adjusting diet supplement recommendations according to the season of the year. To kick off the program, a one-day seminar was presented by Weil’s colleague Tierona Low Dog in Boston on August...

/ August 28, 2012

The “central dogma” of alternative/complementary/integrative medicine

There is something in molecular biology and genetics known as the “central dogma.” I must admit, I’ve always hated the use of the word “dogma” associated with science, but no less a luminary than Francis Crick first stated it in 1958, and it has been restated over the years in various ways. Perhaps my favorite version of the central dogma was succinctly...

/ August 27, 2012

Brief Announcement: Video of Panel on Alternative Medicine

Last month at JREF’s The Amaz!ng Meeting in Las Vegas, 3 SBM bloggers along with Rachael Dunlop of Australia participated in a panel on “The  Truth About Alternative Medicine.” The video is now available on Youtube. It’s a chance for readers to see Steven Novella, David Gorski and Harriet Hall and hear them speak instead of just reading what they write.

/ August 24, 2012

Low Level Lasers: N-Rays in action.

I do not want to get all angsty and omphaloskeptic, but I have been thinking more of late about the purpose of the blog and my role in it.  Blogs,and the people who write them,  are ephemeral.  It takes a unique personality and commitment to churn out these essays and commit them to the ether.  Especially since Michelson and Morley. I have never...

/ August 24, 2012

Acupuncture practice acts: legalized quackery

As Ben Kavoussi observed recently, [o]nce considered archaic and obsolete, Oriental Medicine has greatly benefited from the postmodern attitudes towards science and knowledge. This is because postmodernists consider the ‘truth’ as being relative to one’s viewpoint or stance. They do not see science as a superior process of acquiring knowledge, but as a ‘belief system,’ a ‘language game,’ which does not give...

/ August 23, 2012

Homeopathy’s Recent Woes

Be careful what you wish for. In the last few decades purveyors of dubious medical treatments and products have been trying to go mainstream, and they have had some unfortunate success. They asked for serious scientific investigation into their claims – and they got it. They asked to be treated like real medicine (but not really, they only want the trappings of...

/ August 22, 2012

Prostate Cancer Dilemmas: To Test or Not to Test, To Cut or Not to Cut

Diagnosing prostate cancer based on the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test is a tricky proposition. The cancer itself can be slow-growing, and the treatment harmful. Medicine is complicated, particularly when it comes to cancer screening.

/ August 21, 2012