Month: March 2015

Psychology and Psychotherapy: How Much Is Evidence-Based?

Despite all those Polish jokes, Poland has its share of good scientists and critical thinkers. A superb new book illustrates that fact in spades: Psychology Gone Wrong: The Dark Side of Science and Therapy, by Tomasz Witkowski and Maciej Zatonski, Witkowski is a psychologist, science writer, and founder of the Polish Skeptics Club; Zatonski is a surgeon and researcher known for debunking...

/ March 31, 2015

Angelina Jolie, surgical strategies for cancer prevention, and genetics denialism (revisited)

Sometimes, weird things happen when I’m at meetings. For example, I just got home from the Society of Surgical Oncology (SSO) meeting in Houston over the weekend. Now, one thing I like about this meeting is that, unlike so many other meetings these days—cough, cough, ASCO, I’m looking at you—at the SSO there wasn’t a single talk I could find about “complementary...

/ March 30, 2015

NECSS and SfSBM: A weekend of science and skepticism

A day of Science-Based Medicine, a weekend of science and skepticism NECSS, the North-East Conference on Science and Skepticism, is upon us. Included in the program will be a day of Science-Based Medicine. Full Conference schedule here with Bill Nye as the Keynote speaker. SfSBM speakers will be Harriet Hall, Jann Bellamy, David Gorski, Steve Novella and Mark Crislip. SfSBM speakers will...

/ March 28, 2015

Separating Fact from Fiction in the Not-So-Normal Newborn Nursery: Chiropractic and Craniosynostosis

Pediatricians, particularly those who spend a significant amount of time caring for newborns, see a lot of babies with unusually-shaped heads. Although to be fair, the fact that the overwhelming majority of vaginally-delivered babies, and quite a few born via Caesarean section, will have a transient and abnormal shape to their heads makes it, well, not unusual. In fact, I rarely make...

/ March 27, 2015

Should the FDA crack down on homeopathic “remedies”?

In the category of potentially dangerous complementary or alternative medicine, I can think of few products worse than ones claimed to relieve asthma, yet don’t actually contain any medicine. Yet these products exist and are widely sold. Just over a year ago I described what might be the most irresponsible homeopathic treatment ever: A homeopathic asthma spray. If there was ever a...

/ March 26, 2015

What Is Brain Death?

Of course, any story illustrating the issues surrounding brain death is going to be a sad and tragic tale. In December of 2013, Jahi McMath suffered bleeding complications following a tonsillectomy and tissue removal for sleep apnea. This resulted in a cardiac arrest with an apparent prolonged period of lack of blood flow to the brain. While her heart function was brought...

/ March 25, 2015

Ken Burns Presents Cancer

Note: I wrote two posts today to alert readers to two upcoming television events in time for them to plan their viewing. See the second post for an announcement about a film on scientology, along with an article about Scientology’s War on Medicine that I wrote for Skeptic magazine. Ken Burns has made a lot of outstanding films. His The Civil War...

/ March 24, 2015

Scientology’s War on Medicine

Scientology is famously anti-psychiatry, teaching its believers that psychiatry is not only bogus, but downright evil, and in its place promotes a variety of unscientific and pseudoscientific practices. However, Scientology's war on medicine goes beyond just psychiatry.

/ March 24, 2015

On the “right” to challenge a medical or scientific consensus

While everyone has the "right" to challenge a scientific consensus, overthrowing a scientific consensus takes data. Lots and lots of data. Few people realize how difficult it is.

/ March 23, 2015

Lyme: Two Worlds Compared and Contrasted

The practice of infectious disease (ID) is both easy and difficult. If you read my ID blog on Medscape you are aware of my trials and tribulations in diagnosing and treating infections. ID is easy since, at least in theory, diseases have patterns and an infecting organism has a predictable epidemiology and life cycle. So if you can recognize the pattern and...

/ March 20, 2015