Better Health: Smart Health Commentary Better Health (TM): smart health commentary

Latest Posts

Announcing The Science-Based Medicine Conference

My colleagues and I will be holding a Science-Based Medicine conference on Thursday, July 9th. This is an all-day conference covering topics of science and medicine. The conference is designed for both a professional and general audience.

The conference will be at the Southpoint Casino and Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. It is also part of The Amazing Meeting 7 (TAM7) which is run by the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF). You can register for the conference either separately or packaged with TAM7.  You can register for both here.

Physicians can earn 6 hours of category 1 CME credits for attending the conference.

Below is the list of speakers and the titles of their talks, and below that is the bio for each speaker.

Topics:
Introduction to Science-Based Medicine (Steven Novella, MD)
Case studies in cancer quackery: Testimonials, anecdotes, and pseudoscience (David H. Gorski, MD. PhD)
A Scientific Critique of Chiropractic (Harriet Hall, MD)
Why Evidence-Based Medicine is not yet Science-Based Medicine (Kimball Atwood, MD)
Lyme: From the IDSA to the ILAD to the ABA (Mark Crislip, MD)
Online Health & Social Media: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (Val Jones, MD)
Conclusion (Steven Novella, MD)

Speakers:

Steven Novella, MD
Dr. Novella is an academic clinical neurologist at Yale University School of Medicine. He is the president and co-founder of the New England Skeptical Society. He is also the host and producer of the popular weekly science podcast, The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe. He authors NeuroLogicaBlog and contributes to several other science blogs: The Rogues Gallery, SkepticBlog, and Science-Based Medicine, of which he is also the founding editor.

David H. Gorski, MD, PhD
Dr. Gorski is an Associate Professor of Surgery Division of Surgical Oncology, Wayne State University School of Medicine, Detroit, MI. He is also the Program Leader, Breast Cancer Biology Program, Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute. His cancer research has been funded by the NIH, ASCO, and the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. He is a long-time science blogger who regularly tackles issues related to science and medicine. He is the associated editor of Science-Based Medicine.

Harriet Hall, MD
Dr. Hall is a retired family physician. She spent 20 years in the Air Force as a flight surgeon and family physician and retired as a full colonel. Also known as “The SkepDoc” from her column in Skeptic magazine, she has written extensively about alternative medicine. She is an editor of The Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine and the Science-Based Medicine blog, is an advisor to Quackwatch, and is a contributing editor to both Skeptic and Skeptical Inquirer magazines. Her website is www.skepdoc.info.

Kimball Atwood, MD
Dr. Atwood is a practicing anesthesiologist who is also board-certified in internal medicine. He has been interested in pseudoscience for years. He was a member of the Massachusetts Special Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medical Practitioners, and subsequently wrote its Minority Report opposing licensure for naturopaths. He is an associate editor of the Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine and co-editor of Naturowatch. He is particularly concerned with implausible claims being promoted, tacitly or otherwise, by medical schools and government. He is also dubious about the ethics of human trials of such claims.

Mark Crislip, MD
Dr. Crislip has been a practicing Infectious Disease specialist in Portland, Oregon since 1990. He is Chief of Infectious Diseases for Legacy Health System.
He is responsible for the Quackcast, a skeptical review of Supplements, Complementary and Alternative Medicine, The Persilflagers Annotated Compendium of Infectious Disease Facts, Dogma and Opinion a guide to Infectious Diseases, the Persifalgers Puscast, a podcast review of Infectious Diseases, and Rubor, Dolor, Calor, Tumor, an infectious disease blog.

Val Jones, MD
Dr. Jones is the CEO of Better Health, LLC, a medical blogging network, and VP of Strategic Partnerships at MedPage Today, an online health news source for healthcare professionals. She has been the Senior Medical Director for Revolution Health, and the founding editor of Clinical Nutrition & Obesity, a peer-reviewed e-section of the online Medscape medical journal. Dr. Jones volunteers once a week as a rehabilitation medicine physician at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

Dr. Val at Health 2.0 Conference In San Francisco

Photo of Health 2.0 Conference

Dear friends of the blog – I’m going to San Francisco to the Health 2.0 conference, Oct 21-22 (I have to return to DC on the 23rd to attend the Cartoons & Cocktails event at the National Press Club. Some of my original artwork will be auctioned off for charity.)

Blogging may be light for 2-3 days, but stay tuned. And if you’re going to the Health 2.0 please stop by my booth. It’s #118.

Lesley Stahl at BlogHer: False Information Is Giving Media (and Healthcare) A Bad Name

Photo Credit: wowowow.com

I attended a fantastic conference hosted by BlogHer yesterday. It’s a strange experience, entering a convention hall filled with 98% women. My ears were ringing with an unfamiliar “crowd noise” pitch – instead of the usual rumbling that one expects on entering a ballroom full of people, I noticed the same volume of noise, but a few octaves higher. I suppose it was the sound of estrogen.

The co-founders of BlogHer, Lisa Stone, Elisa Camahort Page, and Jory Des Jardins are a media tour de force. Within a span of 3 years they have built the largest and arguably the most influential group of women bloggers on the Internet. BlogHer drives an astounding 4 billion page views per year and has 16 million unique visitors per year. 

The closing panel discussion was riveting. Lesley Stahl described the decline of television journalism, explaining that the line between pundits and journalists had been blurred beyond recognition.

Anyone on television is considered part of ‘mainstream media.’ There is no distinction made between opinion and fact. That’s why the media has lost trust in the eyes of Americans. Pundits don’t necessarily care about accuracy, and so traditional journalists (who spend a good deal of their time fact checking) are lumped in with them. I get tarred too.

Read more »

Latest Interviews

IDEA Labs: Medical Students Take The Lead In Healthcare Innovation

It’s no secret that doctors are disappointed with the way that the U.S. healthcare system is evolving. Most feel helpless about improving their work conditions or solving technical problems in patient care. Fortunately one young medical student was undeterred by the mountain of disappointment carried by his senior clinician mentors…

Read more »

How To Be A Successful Patient: Young Doctors Offer Some Advice

I am proud to be a part of the American Resident Project an initiative that promotes the writing of medical students residents and new physicians as they explore ideas for transforming American health care delivery. I recently had the opportunity to interview three of the writing fellows about how to…

Read more »

See all interviews »

Latest Cartoon

See all cartoons »

Latest Book Reviews

Book Review: Is Empathy Learned By Faking It Till It’s Real?

I m often asked to do book reviews on my blog and I rarely agree to them. This is because it takes me a long time to read a book and then if I don t enjoy it I figure the author would rather me remain silent than publish my…

Read more »

The Spirit Of The Place: Samuel Shem’s New Book May Depress You

When I was in medical school I read Samuel Shem s House Of God as a right of passage. At the time I found it to be a cynical yet eerily accurate portrayal of the underbelly of academic medicine. I gained comfort from its gallows humor and it made me…

Read more »

Eat To Save Your Life: Another Half-True Diet Book

I am hesitant to review diet books because they are so often a tangled mess of fact and fiction. Teasing out their truth from falsehood is about as exhausting as delousing a long-haired elementary school student. However after being approached by the authors’ PR agency with the promise of a…

Read more »

See all book reviews »

Commented - Most Popular Articles