Is scientific peer review a “sacred cow” ready to be slaughtered?
I’ve frequently noted that one of the things most detested by quacks and promoters of pseudoscience is peer review. Creationists hate peer review. HIV/AIDS denialists hate it. Anti-vaccine cranks like those at Age of Autism hate it. Indeed, as a friend of mine, Mark Hoofnagle, pointed out several years ago, pseudoscientists and cranks of all stripes hate it. There’s a reason for...
Of Mice and Men…and Coconut Oil
Editor’s note: This post is a collaborative effort between Grant Ritchey, a Science-Based Medicine semi-regular, and Stephanie Tornberg-Belanger, a co-author of the research paper discussed below and who brought the study to Grant’s attention. We are pleased to welcome Stephanie as a guest contributor to SBM. In his last SBM post, Grant reported on a systematic review of the literature that undermined...
What’s in your Traditional Chinese Medicine?
What's in your Traditional Chinese Medicine? An Australian analysis of 26 products found 92% were contaminated with heavy metals, undeclared plants, pharmaceuticals, or even animals like the endangered snow leopard, cat, dog, rat and pit viper.
Antidepressants and Autism
A new study looking at the correlation of antidepressant use during pregnancy and the development of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has been making headlines. While the results are likely significant, they are not as worrisome as the headlines may suggest. The study: strengths and weaknesses Overall the study design is solid. They followed 145,456 singleton full-term infants for a total of 904,035.50...
Intermittent Fasting
Fasting can mean anything from total abstinence from food and beverages to restricting specific foods or the hours of food intake. Many religions have traditions of fasting, with various restrictions. There is a good summary of those traditions on Wikipedia. The reason for religious fasting is not to improve health, but for other reasons like improving discipline and demonstrating devotion. There are...
Michigan HB 5126: Who thought it was a good idea to make it easier for parents to obtain nonmedical exemptions to school vaccine mandates and harder for local county health officials to do their jobs?
The Michigan Department of Community Health recently passed a regulation that requires parents seeking personal belief exemptions to school vaccine requirements to receive counseling at a local state or county health office, and the regulation has worked. Personal belief exemptions are down. No wonder the Michigan legislature is trying to reverse the rule and ban the MDCH from enforcing similar rules in...
Worshiping at the altar of the Cult of the Brave Maverick Doctor
One of my favorite television shows right now is The Knick, as I described before in a post about medical history. To give you an idea of how much I’m into The Knick, I’ll tell you that I signed up for Cinemax for three months just for that one show. (After its second season finale airs next Friday, I’ll drop Cinemax until...
Home birth tragedies lead to changes in Oregon
Oregon Health Plan (OHP), the state’s Medicaid insurer, will no longer cover planned home and birth center births for women whose pregnancies aren’t classified as low risk, based on newly-established criteria. The Health Evidence Review Commission (HERC), a group of experts designated by the state, came up with criteria that will exclude women with a substantial list of conditions, such as high...
The Ethics of Prescribing Worthless Treatments
Is it ever ethical for a physician to prescribe a treatment to a patient that they know to be entirely without efficacy? Is it ever possible to do this without deceiving the patient to some degree? I think the answer to both questions is a clear “no.” Within the flipped reality of “alternative medicine,” however, it suddenly becomes acceptable to deceive patients...
Don’t Blame the Patient