Month: March 2010

Plausibility in Science-Based Medicine

A question that arises often when discussing the optimal role of science in medicine is the precise role of plausibility, or prior probability. This is, in fact, the central concept that separates (for practical if not philosophical reasons) science-based medicine (SBM) from evidence-based medicine (EBM). The concept featured prominently in the debate between myself and Dr. Katz at the recent Yale symposium...

/ March 10, 2010

The 2nd Yale Research Symposium on Complementary and Integrative Medicine. Part II

The Main Event: Novella vs. Katz The remainder of the Symposium comprised two panels. The first was what I had come to see: a Moderated Discussion on Evidence and Plausibility in the Context of CAM Research and Clinical Practice, featuring our Founder, Steve Novella, who is also Assistant Professor of Neurology at Yale; and David Katz, the speaker who had borne the...

/ March 9, 2010

Halsted: The Father of Science-Based Surgery

One (dark and stormy?) night in 1882, a critically ill 70 year old woman was at the verge of death at her daughter’s home, suffering from fever, crippling pain, nausea, and an inflamed abdominal mass. At 2 AM, a courageous surgeon put her on the kitchen table and performed the first known operation to remove gallstones. The patient recovered uneventfully. The patient...

/ March 9, 2010

A nutritional approach to the treatment of HIV infection—same old woo?

I get all sorts of mail. I get mail from whining Scientologists, suffering patients, angry quacks—and I get lots of promotional material. I get letters from publishers wanting me to review books, letters from pseudo-bloggers wanting me to plug their advertiblog—really, just about anything you can imagine. Most of the time I just hit “delete”; it’s obvious that they’ve never read my...

/ March 8, 2010

Biologie Totale and other bastard offspring of Ryke Geerd Hamer’s German New Medicine

A few months ago, I wrote about a particularly nasty form of cancer quackery known as the “German New Medicine” or Die Germanische Neue Medizin in German. As you may recall, the German New Medicine is based on the nonsensical idea that cancer arises from an internal emotional conflict. This conflict then results in what is called the “Dirk Hamer Syndrome” (DHS)...

/ March 8, 2010

The 2nd Yale Research Symposium on Complementary and Integrative Medicine. Part I

March 4, 2010 Today I went to the one-day, 2nd Yale Research Symposium on Complementary and Integrative Medicine. Many of you will recall that the first version of this conference occurred in April, 2008. According to Yale’s Continuing Medical Education website, the first conference “featured presentations from experts in CAM/IM from Yale and other leading medical institutions and drew national and international...

/ March 5, 2010

A Welcome Upgrade to a Childhood Vaccine – PCV 13

Children aren’t supposed to die.  That so many of us accept this statement without a blink is remarkable and wonderful, but it is also a very recent development in human history.  Modern sanitation, adequate nutrition, and vaccination have largely banished most of the leading killers of children to the history books.  Just look at the current leading causes of childhood death in...

/ March 5, 2010

Meet me in St. Louis?

I just thought I’d make a brief announcement that I’m currently in St. Louis attending the annual meeting of the Society of Surgical Oncology. If any of our St. Louis readers are attending the meeting, look me up. I’d be tickled to death to know whether any of my colleagues here are even aware of SBM, much less regular readers. (If no...

/ March 4, 2010

Science-based Chiropractic: An Oxymoron?

I spent 43 years in private practice as a “science-based” chiropractor and a critic of the chiropractic vertebral subluxation theory. I am often asked how I justified practicing as a chiropractor while renouncing the basic tenets of chiropractic. My answer has always been: I was able to offer manipulation in combination with physical therapy modalities as a treatment for mechanical-type back pain—a...

/ March 4, 2010

Acupuncture for Depression

One of the basic principles of science-based medicine is that a single study rarely tells us much about any complex topic. Reliable conclusions are derived from an assessment of basic science (i.e prior probability or plausibility) and a pattern of effects across multiple clinical trials. However the mainstream media generally report each study as if it is a breakthrough or the definitive...

/ March 3, 2010