Tag: religion

Snake Oil apostates

The appeal of being a medical “apostate”

There has long been a huge appeal in medicine that derives from being an "apostate". Since COVID-19 hit, apostasy has become like a drug among too many doctors, and social media has amplified the popularity of "medical apostates" beyond anything I've seen previously.

/ November 7, 2022

How We Believe

James Alcock's new book about belief is a masterpiece that explains how our minds work, how we form beliefs, and why they are so powerful. It amounts to a course in psychology and an owner's manual for the brain.

/ June 26, 2018

“Detox”: Ritual purification masquerading as medicine and wellness

If the "central dogma" of alternative medicine is that wishing makes it so, one of the most important of the other organizing dogmas of alternative medicine is that "toxins," whether they come from inside or outside, are making us sick and that we can't be healthy until we "detoxify." This is far more a religious belief than a science-based one.

/ January 30, 2017

Ontario fails to protect the life of a First Nations girl with cancer

A few weeks ago, Steve Novella invited me on his podcast, The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe, to discuss a cancer case that has been in the news for several months now. The case was about an 11-year-old girl with leukemia who is a member of Canada’s largest aboriginal community. Steve wrote about this case nearly a month ago. Basically, the girl’s...

/ November 17, 2014

Washington State’s Unconscionable, Unconstitutional Child Protection Law

I recently wrote about the conflict between child protection and the religious freedom of believers in faith healing. That issue has reared its ugly head again in the state of Washington. Washington law currently denies the children of Christian Scientists equal protection under the law governing child abuse and neglect, and it grants a special exemption from criminal prosecution for abuse and...

/ January 28, 2014

Does thinking make it so? CAM placebo fantasy versus scientific reality

Last week, I discussed a rather execrable study. Actually, the study itself wasn’t so execrable, at least not in its design, which was a fairly straightforward three-arm randomized clinical trial. Rather it was the interpretation of the study’s results that was execrable. In brief, the authors tested an “energy healing” modality known as “energy chelation” versus a placebo (sham “energy chelation”) and...

/ February 6, 2012

Science and Morality

I have frequently said that science can only provide data to inform our decisions but can’t tell us what we “should” do; that it can determine facts but not values. I stand corrected. A persuasive new book by Sam Harris, The Moral Landscape,  has convinced me that science can and should determine what is moral. In fact, it is a more reliable...

/ October 12, 2010

Abortion and breast cancer: The manufactroversy that won’t die

Whatever one thinks about abortion from a moral standpoint, we at SBM would argue that any discussion of the risks of abortion should be based in rigorous science. One "risk" of abortion frequently claimed by antiabortion activists is that it causes breast cancer, even if it takes science as bad as that found in a recently published epidemiological "study" on abortion and...

/ January 18, 2010

AA is Faith-Based, Not Evidence-Based

Alcoholics Anonymous is the most widely used treatment for alcoholism. It is mandated by the courts, accepted by mainstream medicine, and required by insurance companies. AA is generally assumed to be the most effective treatment for alcoholism, or at least “an” effective treatment. That assumption is wrong. We hear about a few success stories, but not about the many failures. AA’s own...

/ May 19, 2009

Another Useless NCCAM-Funded Study

Sometimes I read an article in a medical journal that makes me say, “Well, duh! I could have told you that without a study.” Sometimes I read collected data that make me ask, “So what?” Sometimes I read an article that makes me wonder what kind of pogo stick they used to jump from their data to their conclusions. Sometimes I read...

/ October 28, 2008