Tag: pseudoscience

Medical conspiracy theories and COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has spawned almost innumerable conspiracy theories, and conspiracists like the antivaccine movement have joined forces with COVID-19 conspiracy theorists. To combat the proliferation of pseudoscience rooted in conspiracy theories, it is useful to step back and examine the nature of conspiracy theories, including ones that are not medical, even ones like QAnon. Critical thinking is the key to inoculating...

/ May 18, 2020

More Pseudoscience for COVID-19

The science and pseudoscience of COVID-19 are being tested in the real world.

/ April 8, 2020

Quackery in Medical School: Chapman Points

If you want to become a physician in the United States, you have two educational routes available to you: osteopathic and vanilla medical schools. Osteopathic medical school graduates earn a Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine (D.O) degree, and vanilla medical school graduates earn a Doctor of Medicine (M.D) degree. If you’re wondering what the difference is between the two, the answer is basically...

/ February 21, 2020

 European Manifesto Against Pseudo-Therapies

A new organization in Spain is trying to protect patients from becoming victims of pseudoscience. They have prepared a manifesto.

/ January 28, 2020

Zapping a Cold with Copper

Will an overpriced piece of copper prevent or treat the common cold? The science is not there.

/ November 13, 2019

A world-renowned placebo researcher asks, “Does placebo research boost pseudoscience?”

Professor Fabrizio Benedetti is the most famous and almost certainly also the most influential researcher investigating the physiology of placebo effects. In a recent commentary, he asks whether placebo research is fueling quackery, as quacks co-opt its results. The answer to that question is certainly yes. A better question is: How do supporters of science counter the placebo narrative promoted by quacks,...

/ September 23, 2019

Veterinary quackery at the San Diego Zoo

As I was spending a quiet Saturday night watching Animal Planet, I was disturbed to see out and out quackery on The Zoo:San Diego, as an elephant named Tembo, who was suffering from arthritis of the hip and one of her legs, was being subjected to thermography and acupuncture. Yes, as with human medicine, acupuncture quackery has infiltrated even the highest levels...

/ September 2, 2019
Vaccine Guide

The Vaccine Guide: Cherry picked studies and deceptive highlighting in the service of antivaccine pseudoscience

The Vaccine Guide is a website and a book by Ashley Everly, a "toxicology consultant" for Health Freedom Idaho. It's been making the rounds in the antivaccine underbelly of social media lately and basically consists of screenshots of cherry picked studies, articles, and web pages, with Everly's highlighting passages to provide an antivaccine spin. It's clever in a way, but also rather...

/ August 19, 2019

Luminas: Unbelievable Claims About Pain Relief

If it sounds too good to be true, it probably isn't true. The claims for the Luminas pain relief patch are not just unscientific; they defy common sense. It's quantum quackery.

/ July 9, 2019

Taking On the Wellness Industry

The wellness industry is just one more manifestation of quackery and pseudoscience in health.

/ June 12, 2019