Category Archives: General

A colleague recently received the following statement, as part of a follow-up report from a board-certified specialist to whom she had referred a case. The pet received a number of alternative medical therapies as well as conventional treatment for its … Continue reading →

One of the most common responses I get when I point out the lack of evidence for particular CAM therapies is, “So what? If it doesn’t do any harm and if people feel better, even just because of a placebo … Continue reading →

Though it’s certainly not an original observation, I’ve begun to see some repeating patterns of behavior associated with unreliable and unscientific medical claims, and I think it might be useful to review some possible warning signs that one is dealing … Continue reading →

My recent brush with the “healthcare choice” concept, as well as a podcast interview I listened to with Dr. Paul Offit on Point of Inquiry put me in mind of an interesting and challenging puzzle in the philosophy of medical … Continue reading →

CAM proponents often engage in the rhetorical fallacy known as special pleading. Wikipedia’s definition of this is adequate: “a form of spurious argumentation where a position in a dispute introduces favorable details or excludes unfavorable details by alleging a need … Continue reading →

CAM proponents are very fond of citing the antiquity and lineage, fictional or not, for their methods. Acupuncture, Traditional Chinese Medicine, and many herbal nostrums are promoted as “time-honored,” with the implication or explicit statement that anything people have been … Continue reading →

Good eveni…Is this on? Can you hear me in the back? Good, ok. Good evening ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the 129th meeting of the Skeptics’ Circle. I’m SkeptVet, and I’ll be your MC this evening. Sorry, it’s my … Continue reading →

Mark Crislip at Science-Based Medicine recently discussed Hill’s Criteria of Causation, but after looking at Dr. Hill’s original paper I felt obliged to examine the subject here as well because it is central to science-based medicine, and key in differentiating … Continue reading →