Month: September 2014

K2: The Vitamin, Not the Mountain

Science is complicated. Simple concepts that appear at first to be obviously true or untrue usually turn out to be more nuanced than we thought. Newtonian physics was taken as “the truth” until we learned in the 20th century that it didn’t apply on cosmological or subatomic scales. Medicine and human physiology are more complicated than most people realize or want to...

/ September 30, 2014

Quackademia update: The Cleveland Clinic, George Washington University, and the continued infiltration of quackery into medical academia

Quackery has been steadily infiltrating academic medicine for at least two decades now in the form of what was once called “complementary and alternative medicine” but is now more commonly referred to as “integrative medicine.” Of course, as I’ve written many times before, what “integrative medicine” really means is the “integration” of quackery with science- and evidence-based medicine, to the detriment of...

/ September 29, 2014

Hiccups: From Acupuncture to Quantum Touch

nOne of the most common questions I get in the newborn nursery, especially from first time parents, involves hiccups. Babies hiccup in the womb and most, if not all of them, will have periodic bouts of hiccups in the neonatal period. But many new parents are surprised by their baby’s first spasmodic contractions of the diaphragm. When brought up, it is often...

/ September 26, 2014

If you don’t buy this supplement for your child, you’re a terrible parent

The supplement industry wants you to buy their products, and they’re not above using a little parental guilt to make you into a customer. In the photo above, the promoter is my local pharmacy, where the large window display caught my eye: Give your Child The Tools to SUCCEED in School! Who doesn’t want their child to succeed? And if you knew...

/ September 25, 2014

“Mystery” Illness in Colombia

It looks like we can file this one under “here we go again.” A small town in Colombia, El Carmen de Bolivar, has seen more than 200 girls hospitalized with a mysterious illness since May of this year. The symptoms include dizziness, headaches, and fainting. So far, all of the girls hospitalized have been found to be healthy and were quickly released...

/ September 24, 2014

Bad News and Good News from Down Under: Science-Based Medicine in Australia

The bad news: in a disturbing attempt to woo customers, some Australian pharmacists are offering in-store consultations with naturopaths. The good news: Australian skeptics and supporters of science have had a lot of recent successes in combatting quackery. Non-Doc in a Box In an article in the Australian magazine The Skeptic, Loretta Marron reports on naturopaths in pharmacies. You can read it...

/ September 23, 2014

Do doctors pay attention to negative randomized clinical trials?

We at the Science-Based Medicine blog believe that all medicine, regardless of where it comes from, should be held to a single science-based standard with regards to efficacy, effectiveness, and safety. We tend to focus primarily on “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM), now more commonly known as “integrative medicine,” because (1) we believe it to be undermining the scientific basis of medicine...

/ September 22, 2014

Announcement: “Integrative oncology” – Really the best of both worlds?

One of our goals here at SBM is to do more than just blog about the issues of science and pseudoscience in medicine that are our raison d’être. We also want to publish our science-based critiques in the peer-reviewed medical literature. Our first crack at this was an article by Steve Novella and myself published last month in Trends In Molecular Medicine...

/ September 19, 2014

Rationalizing the Ridiculous: Acupuncture

I remain flummoxed. How do physicians and health care systems, trained in all the sciences that lie at the heart of medicine, justify the use of pseudo-medical interventions with no basis in reality? Rationalization. Making excuses: a defense mechanism in which controversial behaviors or feelings are justified and explained in a seemingly rational or logical manner to avoid the true explanation, and...

/ September 19, 2014

Missouri tackles primary care shortage with “assistant physicians”

A new law in Missouri will allow medical school graduates who have not completed a residency to practice in underserved areas. They will be able to call themselves “doctor” but will be licensed as “assistant physicians” with significant limitations on their practice. (The first link is to Senate Bill 716, the bill that was passed and signed by the governor. It covers...

/ September 18, 2014