Category: Science and Medicine
Cochrane Reviews: The Food Babe of Medicine?
There are two topics about which I know a fair amount. The first is Infectious Disease. I am expert in ID, Board Certified and certified bored, by the ABIM. The other, although to a lesser extent, is SCAMs. When I read the literature on these topics, I do so with extensive knowledge and, in the case of ID, 30 years of clinical...
Microwaves and Nutrition
Science-based medicine is a concept that is larger than the analysis of any specific topic. It is, essentially, an approach to answering health and medical questions, one that involves careful and thorough analysis of scientific evidence within a framework of understanding of critical thinking, mechanisms of self-deception, and the process of science itself. We feel this creates the best opportunity to arrive...
More questions about acetaminophen: Does it cause ADHD?
“Will Tylenol harm my baby?” Pharmacists are among the most accessible of health professionals, and so we receive a lot of questions from the public. No appointment required, and the advice is free. Among the most frequent sources of questions are women seeking advice on drug use in pregnancy. This is an area where some health professionals are reluctant to tread....
Agnotology: The Study of Ignorance
A comment from the blog: Every single time – bar none – I have had a conversation with someone about CAM and its modalities, they are absolutely astonished when I explain to them what the modality really is. One story I love telling comes from my friend in the year behind me. His parents are professional chemists and he came home one...
Naturopathy vs. Science: Allergy Edition
I glanced at my pharmacy license recently, and noticed I became a licensed pharmacist almost exactly twenty years ago. Two decades seems like a long time to do pretty much anything, yet I can still vividly recall some of the patients I encountered early in my career, working evenings in a retail pharmacy that drew heavily on the alternative medicine crowd. It...
Medical Conspiracies
Anyone publicly writing about issues of science and medicine from a pro-science perspective likely gets many e-mails similar to the ones I see every week. Here’s just one recent example: Im sorry the medical community has become decadent and lazy as most that follow your stance could care less to study the real truth. I have also seen it much more deviant...
Different Strokes for Different Folks: Assessing Risk in Women
You may have noticed that men and women are different. I hope you have noticed. As the French say, vive la différence! It’s not just that one has dangly bits and the other has bumpy chests. Or that one has to shave a beard and doesn’t like to ask for directions while the other has menstrual periods and likes to discuss feelings....
Measles gets a helping hand
In a recent post I shared a bit of my personal, near-death experience with measles during the US epidemic of 1989-1991. As I describe in that post, I contracted a very serious measles infection at the end of medical school, and was highly infectious when I interviewed for a residency position at Seattle Children’s Hospital. Like others my age who received an...
Open Data
PLOS (the Public Library of Science) is a non-profit open access publisher of science articles. Their goal is to make scientific data accessible to everyone, in the name of transparency and open communication. Now they have taken their approach one step further, announcing their policy that all articles published in a PLOS journal must submit their original data so that anyone can...
False “balance” on influenza with an appeal to nature
One of the encouraging shifts I’ve seen in health journalism over the past few years is the growing recognition that antivaccine sentiment is antiscientific at its core, and doesn’t justify false “balance” in the media. There’s no reason to give credibility to the antivaccine argument when their positions are built on a selection of discredited and debunked tropes. This move away from...