Small update

I’ve updated my Resource on Alternative Medicine. I’ve mostly added material on pseudoskepticism and why it’s a pretty bad thing. It still has a long way to go before being the definitive resource I want it to be, but hey, any improvement helps.
Technorati Tags: pseudoskepticism, alternative medicine

Zinc – “Clinically proven”

Whether stated in an ad for conventional or alternative medicine, I typically take claims of “clinically proven” with a grain of salt. That’s because the statistical methodology used to “prove” these claims basically says “if we assume these claims aren’t true, then the results we have seen in studies would have been too bizarre.” This [...]

Acupuncture vs. fibromyalgia: 2 out of 3 isn’t bad

A recent study found acupuncture to be an effective therapy for treating fibromyalgia pain, fatigue, and anxiety. Of two other studies, one reported positive conclusions and one reported negative. The study claims to be a model of how acupuncture clinical trials can be run.
Technorati Tags: acupuncture, alternative medicine

Lying with (non)statistics: Phasers are set to “kill habit”

Public citizen has “filed a petition”:http://www.wral.com/health/9412806/detail.html to end the marketing of a “low-power laser acupuncture” treatment for smoking cessation.
What struck me was not the treatment itself, but the way in which the so-called clinical trials they are running to “prove” their treatment’s efficacy. You can read about it at the link, but to me the [...]

More on Ayurveda

So, not long after I read Orac’s hit piece on alternative medicine about a very old JAMA article about mercury in Ayurvedic herbs manufactured in India and sold in the US, I read this entry on how the government of India is testing Ayurveda and trying to see how it fits with the world of [...]

Lying with statistics: relative risk vs. absolute risk

Apparently, the theme of the day is Mike Adams the “Health Ranger”:http://www.newstarget.com.
Pat Sullivan alerted me to “this article”:http://www.newstarget.com/019368.html by the Health Ranger which alerts people to a valid concern in the reporting of statistics. This is another case where you should really read the source before reading the rest of my comment.
My comments:

… confidence only when there are grounds for it

Mike Adams (the “Health Ranger”) recently posted a “bit of vitriol”:http://www.newstarget.com/019364.html about skeptics of alternative medicine. An over-the-top article has provoked some “over-the-top”:http://www.autismstreet.org/weblog/?p=39 “responses”:http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2006/05/scam_skeptics_and_chickens.php#commentsArea.
While Adam’s invective may have gone way too far in painting skeptics of alternative medicine as cowardly defenders of a failing system, I think a simple straw-man argument dismissal is short-sighted and [...]

Defeat snatched out of the jaws of victory: study conclusions and media reporting

Ok, so this post has been hanging out in my draft queue for over a month. It’s time to send it on, even if it is still unpolished.
Few things bother me more than seeing a flawed study interpretation disseminated widely (usually due to sloppiness, sometimes due to trying to “prove” a point).
An “editorial”:http://www.lef.org/magazine/mag2006/jun2006_awsi_01.htm?sourcecode=MCC02E&source=INFEML_MCC02E&key=website written for [...]

Positive changes

In addition to the websites of certain skeptics, I have several “altie” sites on my RSS reader. I find of material in both groups I disagree with, but I did note a NewsTarget survey in which a large majority of the responders had reported making positive lifestyle changes, including reading food labels before buying food.
I’d [...]

A positive preliminary CAM study, and why we need to study CAM

In an _in vitro_ study, ginger induced death in ovarian cancer cells. Given the amount of time and risk it takes to get a drug from a positive _in vitro_ study to marketing approval, I think we can agree (as the researchers assert) that it will be a long time before doctors send you to [...]