Tag: cancer
Google delists Mike Adams’ Natural News website. Was it because of fake news?
Last week, in a surprise move Google delisted Mike Adams' Natural News website. Predictably, Adams immediately cried "Conspiracy!" and accused Google of punishing him for his support for "natural health" and Donald Trump. The truth appears to be that Adams violated one of Google's rules, leaving the question: What's the best way to fight fake news and fake medicine on the Internet?
“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.
How reproducible is basic lab research in cancer biology?
Last week, a review of the reproducibility of several highly cited cancer biology papers was published. The results were mixed and demonstrate how difficult reproducing published results can be at times—and how scientists need to do better.
The Never-Ending Unchanging Story
NaturalNews.com is one of the most highly trafficked alternative medicine websites in existence. Even though its owner, Mike Adams, has become a rising star in the alt right and has also gone full conspiracy theorist à la Alex Jones, that doesn't mean he's given up promoting medical pseudoscience. He's still at it, this time continuing to make unsupported claims about fluoride in...
Cancer quackery from Germany to Australia
Sadly, cancer quackery is a worldwide phenomenon. Here, we examine its reach from Germany to Australia.
Infectious Diseases and Cancer
With apologies to my colleagues, but infectious diseases really is the most interesting specialty in medicine. There are innumerable interesting associations and interactions of infectious diseases in medicine, history, art, science, and, well, life, the universe and everything. ID is so 42. A recent email led me to wander the numerous interactions between infections and cancer. There are the cancers that are...
Diet and exercise versus cancer: A science-based view
Yes, diet and exercise can be useful to prevent some cancers. Unfortunately, they don't prevent all cancers, and the effect size is more modest than often represented. That's not to say that eating right and exercise aren't good. They are, for so many other reasons than cancer. Just don't view them as a panacea for preventing cancer.
The Cancer Moonshot: Hype versus reality
The Cancer Moonshot has been promoted as a strategy to break the logjam that seems to be holding up new, much more effective treatments for cancer. The key word is "seems," because in reality the Cancer Moonshot is more hype than promise.
3-Bromopyruvate: The latest cancer cure “they” don’t want you to know about
Why is it that whenever naturopaths and other quacks embrace a new "cancer cure," somehow "they" (whoever "they" are) don't want you to know about it? In this case, it's 3-BP, an actual experimental drug that shows some promise but is by no means ready for prime time (or FDA approval) yet.
Newborn Phototherapy and Cancer: Cutting Edge Research or “Big Data” Failure?
While social media and news outlets were reacting, or in some cases overreacting, to a new rodent-based medical study on the unlikely link between cell phone use and brain cancer last month, two studies and an accompanying commentary were quietly published in Pediatrics that raised similar concerns. Rather than cell phone use, the proposed potential cause of pediatric cancer in these newly...