Skeptic Uncovers Some Of The Week’s Medical Quackery
Hey there skeptifans. Here are the media Fails and Wins you sent me last week.
Edzard Ernst on alternative medicine
After Steve Jobs death, which we now know may have been hurried due to his decision to choose alternative treatments over evidence based ones, Maclean’s chose to run this Q&A with alternative medicine expert Edzard Ernst. Several years ago Dr. Ernst set out to find out if there is evidence to support the most popular alternative treatments. His findings were that the vast majority of alternative medicine is quackery. I hope this interview will help sway some people on the fence about chiropractic and other placebo treatments.
Family Doc Says No To Perilous Chickenpox Pops
Anna spotted this story on NPR. Apparently, there is a mom in Texas selling chicken pox infected lollipops to parents who believe it’s better that their kids get it while young. Besides the fact that the virus probably won’t survive in the lollipop, it’s just a bad idea. This article does a great job at covering why.
The Oprah effect and why not all scientific evidence is valuable
Fred sent in this win from Maclean’s. Despite Oprah being off the air now, the effects of her pseudoscience peddling can still be felt. This article is a how-to guide at evaluating scientific information. It offers great advice for separating the wheat from the chaff when you hear about a scientific study in the news.
That’s the Fails and Wins this week, folks. See you again soon. Send me your links at links@skepticnorth.com.
*This blog post was originally published at Skeptic North*
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