One of the books I'm currently reading is the excellent The Man Who Touched His Own Heart, by Rob Dunn. It's a fascinating and beautifully-written narrative of how our understanding of both the heart and of ways to treat its disorders have developed over the centuries (& yes, I will review the book properly when I've […]
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scientists have cured cancer! – or have they?
The other day my friend Renee sent through this link, & her thoughts. "This article (& website) set my woo-ometer off big time," she said. The article’s entitled Scientists cure cancer, but no one takes notice, and begins thusly: Canadian researchers find a simple cure for cancer, but major pharmaceutical companies are not interested. Researchers at the […]
Continue readingit must be the silly season
… not only do we have at least one homeopath using heat to treat burns (yes, really! That piece of burning stupid – to use an Oracian aphorism – is admirably covered here by Grant), but we also have the Daily Mail announcing that scientists have discovered – ta-daah! – a hangover cure (hat-tip to David […]
Continue readingleeches & health – asking some questions
This morning’s Herald ran an article on ‘alternative therapies’ – New Zealanders’ beliefs about their effectiveness, & a Herald reporter’s experience of one such ‘therapy’. (Apparently there will be more to come over the next few days.) The article presented some results from a recent UMR research poll – as it was provided ‘exclusively to […]
Continue readingtwisting the truth on vaccination
This ‘bad science’ letter popped up in the Waikato Times a couple of days ago. It was actually entitled "Democratic right"… [A previous writer] condoned governmental blackmail in his letter in which he accused me of irresponsibility for defending the democratic right to choose whether to immunize or not. Does [he] know the MMR vaccine that […]
Continue readingparadoxical frogs
Well, I’ve just got back from a series of conferences (3 in the space of 10 days) – & all of them about teaching! I was getting pretty tired by the end of it all, but at the same time it was really good to be able to spend time talking about teaching (& about […]
Continue readingmms revisited
A while ago I wrote a post on the so-called ‘miracle mineral supplement’, aka MMS. I thought I’d re-post it following an article debunking this nostrum in the Sunday Star-Times. My original post attracted a couple of comments from people claiming that MMS will cure a multitude of ills; I’ve reproduced them, & my responses, […]
Continue readingasking the right questions
A colleague sent me advance notice of an upcoming protest: a ‘mass overdose’ of sugar pills being organised as a protest against ‘homeopathic remedies’. (Grant picked up on this & has blogged on it over at SciBlogs. This got me thinking (as these things do) about an interesting podcast by Mark Crislip, who focuses on supplements & ‘complementary & […]
Continue readingmore on sodium chlorite – the ‘miracle mineral supplement’
After reading & commenting on that letter, which attributed health benefits to sodium chlorite, I found my interest had been piqued. Just what has been claimed for this chemical? So I went looking…
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