There’s a group blog for battling creationists (The Panda’s Thumb), a group blog for fighting the climate change denialists (RealClimate), and now there’s one targeting quacks: Science Based Medicine. Add it to your bookmarks and newsfeeds!
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Thank you. Looks good. I’m looking forward to the “examining dubious products and claims” posts. I’m sure we all know someone who loves telling us about the latest miracle cure. Mine is aunt Joey. Due to her advice, I once found myself on a table, being cured of everything from my alleged “allergy to fabric softener” to my equally dubious “allergy to duck feathers”. The lady “curing” me held vials filled with the “bad” items over my stomach, presumably to “recalibrate my vibrations”…after the visit I nearly died laughing and phoned my mother to inform her that I was never listening to aunt Joey’s advice ever again. Unfortunately, Joey does not have internet access, otherwise I would’ve bookmarked that site for her.
The blog lists one of the authors as David Gorski, a surgical oncologist with a ScienceBlog. Is that Orac?
With all the ridiculous claims on here, I’m not so sure it’s a bad thing for your Aunt Joey to be without net access.
Indeed, I am looking forward to reading this blog, right after I finish my last silver chelation treatment.
Seriously, how does Steven Novella find the time to do so much quality blogging? Looks like it will be another fine blog, Steve.
Even if it is Orac, he has said he does not want his writing as Orac to be attached to his real life practice. So I think the polite thing to do is just leave it a question unasked and unanswered.
Sweet! This is just my gut speaking, but I’ve seem to have come across more and more pseudoscientific medical woo as 2007 progressed.
There’s another one, BadScienceBlogs, which is mostly about quackery in the UK: http://www.badscienceblogs.net/ (Not sure if technically fits the definition of “group blog”.)
My partner’s poor old dad is a victim of this crap. He just spent a week in the hospital with a horrible case of prostatitis complete with abcess, and his blood sugar was through the roof. This after months of taking mail order diabetes and prostate health pills. He continually gets these pamphlets in the mail, advertising one quack remedy or another, usually captioned, “What your doctor isn’t telling you!” or “How your prescription medications are ruining your health!” Fortunately, he responded rapidly to the IV antibiotics he was given, and is now on oral insulin to get the blood sugar down.
It’s enough to make one wish that there was a hell for these bastards who prey on the uneducated elderly. They could use a slow roasting on a spit over a lake of fire.
I think that a really positive project and one that should be tracked and Web-amplified is the National Alternative Medicine department(?)’s scientific testing of the various alternative-medicine hypotheses and publishing of their results. That would be a good link and one that we could reoport on to give it continuing and wide publicity. And of course we could dig up anti-quackery sites for their blogroll, e.g. McGill University’s Office for Science and Society.
One issue with modern medical care is the lack of science background of the practioners. Maybe MDs have to attend hard sciences, but the Nurses in a local college don’t have to take any. In fact, most of the student body don’t accept evolution. Scary.
An honest question:
Is there (or are there) any group blog(s) along the lines of Panda’s Thumb or Real Climate that someone here can recommend as a good resource for battling opponents of human embryonic stem cell research?
Thank you in advance.
Mold, how on earth can a nursing program train nurses without including any actual science in the curriculum? How do they explain things like germs and the importance of washing one’s hands without referencing basic bacteriology?
it is interesting that here in europe the ones who are left and intelligent (like you and like me :-) ) agree on 1 and on 3 but not on 2. I think there is at present no scientific proof for man-caused climate change. Great blog PZ sorry for my poor english
it is interesting that here in europe the ones who are left and intelligent (like you and like me :-) ) agree on 1 and on 3 but not on 2. I think there is at present no scientific proof for man-caused climate change. Great blog PZ sorry for my poor english
@#10 & #12
Nursing programs teach nursing, and often don’t have classes that specifically focus on a particular science, but if it’s a nursing program worth its salt, the students will be using scientific concepts in many of the classes. Most–perhaps not all, but certainly most–accredited nursing programs have prerequisites for their applicants including basic biology, chemistry, anatomy, and physiology. I’m not trying to say I think every nurse’s science background is stellar, or even adequate, but neither can the vast majority escape with NO science education.
I teach anatomy and physiology to these students at a college with a highly respected science program and a nationally-recognized nursing program. I plan to use the site PZ has mentioned in my curriculum next quarter. It looks like a great resource!
Which reminds me… less than a week until classes start. What am I doing surfing instead of working? Yikes!
@#10 & #12
Nursing programs teach nursing, and often don’t have classes that specifically focus on a particular science, but if it’s a nursing program worth its salt, the students will be using scientific concepts in many of the classes. Most–perhaps not all, but certainly most–accredited nursing programs have prerequisites for their applicants including basic biology, chemistry, anatomy, and physiology. I’m not trying to say I think every nurse’s science background is stellar, or even adequate, but neither can the vast majority escape with NO science education.
I teach anatomy and physiology to these students at a college with a highly respected science program and a nationally-recognized nursing program. I plan to use the site PZ has mentioned in my curriculum next quarter. It looks like a great resource!
Which reminds me… less than a week until classes start. What am I doing surfing instead of working? Yikes!
What evidence are you waiting for? The ice core samples from the next ice age?
Looks like a good link. Thanks.
Pseudoscience seldom keeps to strict boundaries. I got interested in atheist stuff by first exploring skeptical stuff. I saw — and still see — a strong connect between belief in alternative medicine quackery and belief in religion. Apologists usually use the same sorts of arguments, including the attacks on science, naturalism, and materialism. Proponents of quackery and religion may even share similar word views and thought processes.
To explore this possibility, I’m going to propose what I’m going to call The Penny Test:
You have a health problem — it could be a cold, trouble sleeping, a rash, aches and pains, cancer, whatever. It really bothers you, and you can’t seem to shake it. You’re complaining to a friend and they say “You know what? I had the same problem, and I read about something and tried it. Guess what? No more problem! Get this — you put a penny between your toes, and keep it there for 2 to 3 days. You don’t have to keep it right between your toes, even — put it in the bottom of your socks, and sleep with them on. My sister-in-law had the same problem, and laughed when I told her about it — but she gave it a shot, and even she admitted that it seemed to help — a LOT. And nothing else did.
Now, maybe it’s coincidence, or placebo, or there could be some scientific reason. I don’t know. All I know is that it seemed to work for me, and you should try it. Just try it and see — what do you have to lose?”
Would you
1.) Try the Penny cure, or think about it, or at least agree that it’s not unreasonable to at least give it a chance: there’s nothing to lose.
2.) No way. It’s scientifically implausible AND health is an area with a lot of ambiguity, compounding factors, and subjectivity: there is something to lose.
I suspect that how people answer may have a lot to do with how they approach pseudoscience in general, and religion in particular. It would be interesting to do a controlled study.
There’s also one for religion, well Christianity at least.
http://debunkingchristianity.blogspot.com/
[Penny Cure]
Sure, why not. Maybe the problem is amenable to such a solution. As someone who gets hives on occasion, and has not found a cause, I’m willing to try any number of safe, if pointless, ‘cures’ before hitting up the doctor for another prescription for prednisone.
Is it ok if I silently offer a prayer of hope that this thread doesn’t get hijacked by climateaudit?
Mold (#10) wrote: “Nurses in a local college don’t have to take any [science classes].”
Don’t know which college, or what type of nursing program you’re referring to, but my guess is that it’s a Licensed Practical Nursing program. LPN’s have pretty limited skill sets and training, but they do much of the dirty work of patient care (think bedpans).
Registered Nurses, many of whom also hold Bachelors of Science in Nursing, do have to take hard science courses, at least in the nursing program at the medical school here.
Given the limitations of the LPN skillset, it is possible that as long as they consistently and properly wash their hands (etc) they don’t need to know why. At the RN level, they need to understand germ theory, A&P, etc.
Ok, I’m going to modify the last paragraph of my previous post:
Given the limitations of the LPN skillset, it is possible that as long as they consistently and properly wash their hands (etc) they don’t need a deep understanding of germ theory. At the RN level, they need to understand germ theory, A&P, etc.
now there’s one targeting quacks: Science Based Medicine.
Though it is not a blog, an excellent resource for pseudo-medicine is Quack Watch.
As a surgeon friend once said years ago, “Quackery is at the intersection of gullibility and desperation.”
Awesome. I can’t wait for Dr. Jenny McCarthy’s first post. After hearing from her maybe we can get Drs. Kelly and John Travolta.
I think that a really positive project,I already bookmarked this site.
..while “the more the merrier”, I would endorse the quackwatch tip in #23 above:
http://www.quackwatch.org/
Dr. Barrett has done excellent work there over the years, in the face of vilification and lawsuits. If there was such a thing as “secular sainthood”, I would propose him for canonisation.
Peter
Sigh.
RealClimate is a PR front for Hansen, Mann et al.
Stop citing it as something remotely objective.
RealClimate is science based, so unless you think science isn’t objective, it certainly is objective. It just happens that Hansen, Mann etc. are scientists, doing proper science. Unlike the AGW deniers, who are mostly not scientists, and generally don’t do science.
The science that RNs have to take where I am is limited to Microbiology and A&P. Both are very easy to teach from the “just memorize this stuff” perspective, and often are. That’s scientific information, but isn’t really teaching them to critically think like a scientist. I know an RN who is also a ‘cranio-sacral therapist’, for instance.
Kristjan:
Please define “science-based.”
Reality is objective. Understanding of reality is not. People’s writing about their understanding of reality is not.
My problem with the RC crowd is that they are dishonest. But not the out-and-out lying kind of dishonest. They are careful to maintain plausible deniability.