Results for: NCCAM
How “they” view “us”
We skeptics like to view ourselves as the heroes, as the ones beating back the tide of pseudoscience and protecting the gullible from quacks. Unfortunately, the very victims whom we seek to save don't see it that way. To them, we are the villains, and they hate us. To all too many of them, almost any means are justifiable to combat us....
Traditional Chinese herbalism at the Cleveland Clinic? What happened to science-based medicine?
Quackademic medicine has taken a bold step forward at The Cleveland Clinic, which has opened a traditional Chinese medicine herbal practice.
Curing Hepatitis C: A Success Story and a Price Tag
Previously incurable, hepatitis C now has a treatment. A very, very expensive treatment. But there is hope for acutely and chronically infected people.
Bill and Hillary Clinton go woo with Dr. Mark Hyman and “functional medicine”
Mark Hyman is a "pioneer" (if you can call it that) in a new form of quackery known as functional medicine, which combines a lot of the worst features of conventional medicine with a large dollop of "make it up as you go along" quackery. Unfortunately, it appears that the Clintons find his narrative compelling.
Chiropractic: A Summary of Concerns
Although obscured by controversy, there is evidence to indicate that spinal manipulation can be as effective as conventional treatment methods in relieving low-back pain.1,2,3,4 This grain of truth mixed with chiropractic vertebral subluxation theory that encompasses a broad scope of ailments makes it difficult for the average person to distinguish between appropriate and inappropriate use of manipulation by chiropractors. A person who...
A tale of quackademic medicine at the University of Arizona Cancer Center
NCI-designated comprehensive cancer centers like the University of Arizona should provide rigorously science-based treatment. Unfortunately, magical mystical "treatments" like reiki are offered to UA patients, as I learned from a father of a child treated there.
Eric Merola and Ralph Moss try to exhume the rotting corpse of Laetrile in a new movie
Note: Some of you have probably seen a different version of this post fairly recently. I have a grant deadline this week and just didn’t have time to come up with fresh material up to the standards of SBM. This left me with two choices: Post a “rerun” of an old post, or recycle something. I decided to recycle something for reasons...
How to Think
Robert Todd Carroll, the author of The Skeptic’s Dictionary, has a new book out: The Critical Thinker’s Dictionary: Biases, Fallacies, and Illusion and what you can do about them. Since some of our commenters and most of the CAM advocates we critique are constantly committing logical fallacies, a survey of logical fallacies is a good idea both for us and for them,...
The return of the revenge of high dose vitamin C for cancer
Vitamin C is back in the news as a cancer cure. Is it? No, no it is not.
I Visited a Chickasaw Healer and All I Got Was an Elk Sinew and Buffalo Horn Bracelet
Which headline is real? I Visited a Alchemist. As American alternative chemistry grows in popularity, I decided to experience an even older style of nontraditional transmutation of metals. I Visited an Astrologer. As American alternative astronomy grows in popularity, I decided to experience an even older style of nontraditional stargazing. I Visited a Bloodletter. As American alternative medicine grows in popularity, I...