Eminent Harvard psychologist, mother of positive psychology, New Age quack?
Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas. – Marie Curie’s advice to journalists Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer was on CBS This Morning News explaining plans for a psychosocial intervention study with women with Stage IV metastatic breast cancer. The project would attempt to shrink women’s tumors by shifting their mental perspective back to before they were diagnosed. Seeing her...
Fear mongering about vaccines as “racist population control” in Kenya
There are many conspiracy theories about vaccines, and they circulate almost continuously. Some are relatively new, but most are at least a few years old. They all tend to fall into several defined types, such as the “CDC whistleblower” story, which posits that the “CDC knew” all these years that vaccines cause autism but covered it up, even going so far as...
Why Get A Flu Shot?
Actual discussion: Parent “I want #Ebola vaccine for my child” Doc “There isn’t one, but we have #flushot” Parent “We don’t believe in that” So much of what we are for at Science-Based Medicine is reflected in what we oppose: all the pseudo-medical interventions and SCAMs. It is not always a positive message, forever noting why you should not be participating in...
Political Science: Chronic Lyme Disease
New York may soon join a handful of other states who reject science-based guidelines for the treatment of Lyme disease in favor of ideological guidelines based on the vociferous lobbying of patients and “Lyme literate” health care providers. Ignoring science is an unfortunate but well-known legislative phenomenon. I’ve discussed it a number of times on SBM, in the form of Legislative Alchemy,...
Stroke Death from Chiropractic Neck Manipulation
Chiropractors claim neck manipulation is safe. Evidence suggests otherwise.
Oxygen Myths That Refuse to Die
One of my early forays into the world of pseudoscience was an investigation of “Vitamin O” (the O stands for oxygen). The story is hilarious; please click and read; I guarantee you won’t be able to read it without at least a chuckle. Vitamin O is still for sale; it’s even available on Amazon.com. You can read the manufacturer’s ridiculous rationalizations about...
Retconning the story of traditional Chinese medicine
Proponents of "integrating" traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) into medicine paint a tale of an ancient, unified system of medicine that's been tested over at least two millennia and found to be effective. The real story is very different and is best explained with a term more commonly used to discuss comic books. Basically, the "integration" of TCM into "Western medicine" is nothing...
Blaming breast cancer on autism
Gayle DeLong has been diagnosed with what she refers to as “autism-induced breast cancer”. She’s even given it an abbreviation, AIBC. Unfortunately, as you might be able to tell by the name she’s given her breast cancer, she is also showing signs of falling into the same errors in thinking with respect to her breast cancer as she clearly has with respect...
More Fear-Based Practice Building: Shaken Baby Syndrome and Chiropractic
During my first clinical rotation in medical school, I found myself at the pediatric nurse station one afternoon waiting for a patient to arrive from the emergency department. An adorable older infant was there sitting in a bouncy chair, smiling and drooling as babies tend to do, and looking rather well for an inpatient. The nurse watching her explained that she had...
Naturopathy vs. Science: Fake Diseases
you consult with a naturopath, you could walk out diagnosed with something called Wilson’s Temperature Syndrome. But the naturopath would be wrong, because Wilson’s Temperature Syndrome is a fake disease. One of the hallmarks of alternative medicine is the “fake disease”. Fake diseases don’t actually exist – they are invented without any objective evidence showing that they are real. Fake diseases tend...