chiropractic
oracknows | May 21, 2017Last week, I wrote about acupuncture, specifically how acupuncturists are unhappy that the UK National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), which provides guidelines for recommended treatments for diseases and conditions, does not recommend acupuncture for the treatment of knee osteoarthritis but does recommend arthroscopic washouts and debridement, for which the evidence is weak. My retort was simple: If this is true, the answer is not for NICE to start recommending quackery like acupuncture, but rather for it to stop recommending conventional medical and surgical treatments with…
oracknows | November 28, 2016I don’t have many “rules” per se about blogging, but one informal rule that I do live by is that I never blog about a study if all I can access is the abstract. In general, I insist on having the complete study before I will blog it, because to me the abstract isn’t enough. Basically, if I’m going to blog a study, I generally want to do it right and be able to read the whole paper, because that’s the only way to properly analyze a paper. I find this rule particularly important when analyzing the latest bit of antivaccine pseudoscience, especially because most antivaccine activists don’t go…
oracknows | October 19, 2016Eight months ago, I asked the question: Did chiropractic manipulation of her neck cause Katie May’s stroke? Now, it appears, I know the answer, and the answer is yes:
Katie May, a model who posed for Playboy and gained a massive following on Snapchat, suffered a “catastrophic” stroke in early February and later died after being taken off life-support. Now, TMZ reports reports that a visit to the chiropractor left her with an injury that precipitated the stroke.
TMZ obtained May’s death certificate, which says that she suffered a blunt force injury during a “neck manipulation by [a]…
oracknows | May 4, 2016As regular readers of this blog and related blogs know, over the last two or three decades there has been a successful effort to legitimize quackery in the form of what is now called “integrative medicine.” Three decades ago, modalities like homeopathy, acupuncture, much of traditional Chinese medicine, reflexology, chiropractic, and many other modalities based on vitalism, prescientific mysticism, and pseudoscience were rightly referred to as quackery. Then in the 1990s came “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM), a term that sought to sand the rough edges of quackery off of the,…
oracknows | February 8, 2016Katie May was a model, and by all accounts a very successful one, having appeared in Playboy, Sports Illustrated, and other magazines and websites. Self-proclaimed the "Queen of Snapchat," she also had nearly two million Instagram followers and was a major social media force, having recently parlayed her modeling and social media career into becoming an entrepreneur. She also died unexpectedly on Thursday night at the too-young age of 34, leaving behind a seven-year-old daughter. What makes May's tragic death an appropriate topic for this blog is not so much her young age but rather the…
oracknows | June 29, 2015The overarching goal that proponents of so-called "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) or, as is becoming the preferred term, "integrative" medicine is the mainstreaming of the "unconventional" treatments that fall under the rubric of these two terms. Indeed, that's the very reason why they so insisted on the shift from calling it CAM to calling it "integrative medicine." Not being content with the subsidiary status as not quite "real" medicine" that the words "complementary" and "alternative" imply, they want their woo to be seen as full co-equals with scientific medicine, hence…
oracknows | December 30, 2014
Ever since moving back to the Detroit area nearly seven years ago, one thing I've noticed is a propensity for our local news outlets to go full pseudoscience from time to time. I'm not sure why, other than perhaps that it attracts eyeballs to the screen, but, in reality, most of these plunges into pseudoscience and quackery are so poorly done that I find it hard to believe that even believers find them interesting. For example, back in 2008, I discussed a particularly dumb story aired by our local NBC affiliate WDIV entitled Orbs: Myth or Real?, which, not having started my new job yet, I…
oracknows | December 1, 2014It should come as a surprise to no one that I'm not exactly a fan of "integrative oncology"—or integrative medicine, or "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM), or whatever its proponents want to call it these days. After all, I've spent nearly ten years writing this blog and nearly seven years running another blog dedicated to promoting the scientific basis of medicine, and just this year managed to publish a lengthy commentary in a high impact journal criticizing the very concept of integrative oncology. Unfortunately, it seems to be the equivalent of the proverbial pissing in the…
oracknows | July 30, 2014
Leave it to my good buddy Mark Crislip over at the Society for Science-Based Medicine to have my back when I don't have a lot of time for a detailed post. (Basically, I was being a good university and cancer center citizen last night, going out to dinner with a visiting professor, and I ended up staying out later than I thought. Fortunately, it was a bunch of people that I liked, and it was a very nice restaurant, which made being good enjoyable, particularly when we got to talk a lot of science.) He pointed me to an absolutely horrible study. The modality is perhaps not quite as bad as…
oracknows | July 18, 2014
Of all the alternative medical systems out there, chiropractic is one of the oddest. Unlike many of the others, it has a modicum of plausibility, at least for back problems due to musculoskeletal strains. After all, the science-based specialty of physical therapy uses spinal manipulation to treat back problems. Of course, the big difference between chiropractic and physical therapy is that chiropractic is based on a delusion, namely the concept of subluxations. To science-based specialties, a subluxation a painful partial dislocation. This is different from a chiropractic subluxation,…
oracknows | August 21, 2013Chiropractic is supposed to be the "respectable" face of "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM). At least, that's what chiropractors want you to think. After all, chiropractors are licensed in all 50 states and thus their specialty has the imprimatur of the state to make it appear legitimate. Unfortunately, chiropractors are, as I have said so many times before, physical therapists with delusions of grandeur—and poorly trained as physical therapists at that. They just can't restrict themselves to the musculoskeletal system and can't resist pontificating about and treating systemic…
oracknows | July 11, 2013Well, I'm here at TAM. I had a great time last night meeting up with old friends, although, thanks to the time difference between Eastern time and Las Vegas, combined with my having to give a talk today, I was forced to retire at an early 11 AM (which, of course, felt to me like 2 AM).
As you might imagine, blogging will be light, because I still have to put the finishing touches on my talk for Saturday and take in all the skeptic-y goodness at TAM, but I can't resist this little tidbit. It's a video I came across the other day that brings a whole new meaning to the term "chiroquacktic."…
oracknows | July 20, 2012A couple of weeks ago, I had a bit of fun with a rather clueless chiropractor by the name of J.C. Smith (JCS), who decided to take a swipe at an organization with which I'm associated, namely the Institute for Science in Medicine (ISM). It was such an inept attack, filled with misinformation, pseudoscience, and logical fallacies, that it was what I like to call a "teachable moment" when it comes to chiropractors and chiropractic. Even more amusingly, JCS promised at the end of his post lambasting ISM as a new "medical mafia" that he would be writing a followup post. I could hardly wait. The…
oracknows | July 4, 2012It's rather odd that I'll be writing two posts in a row having to do with a chiropractor, given that chiropractic is at best an occasional topic on this blog. Certainly, I don't hesitate to take on chiropractic when the mood strikes me or, more importantly, when I come across some seriously burning stupid coming from a chiropractor, but other topics tend to dominate my blogging. Let's just put it this way. Two posts in a row on a cancer quack or about antivaccinationists would be nothing the least bit unusual here, but two posts in a row about chiropractors is.
As regular readers probably…
oracknows | July 2, 2012Every so often I come across a post by quacks or supporters of quackery that make me wish that we as skeptics and supporters of science-based medicine actually had the abilities and powers attributed to us. I mean, what's the good of being accused of running a conspiracy to crush any sort of "unconventional" or "alternative" medicine if we don't actually have the power to crush unconventional and alternative medicine? Then, sometimes, there are posts that make me really wish that my bloggy skeptic friends and the skeptic organizations to which I belong actually had the power to do the things…
oracknows | April 15, 2010Today is a great day.
Today, British science writer Simon Singh accomplished something I would never have believed possible, given British libel laws and a very bad ruling by Sir David Eady, the presiding judge, a ruling characterized as astonishingly illiberal. Despite the long odds, Singh appealed the ruling and actually won.
As a result, the British Chiropractic Association has thrown in the towel on its bogus libel action against Singh:
Having carefully considered its position in the light of the judgment of the Court of Appeal (1st April 2010), the British Chiropractic Association (BCA)…
palmd | December 8, 2009Some time ago I issued a naturopath challenge in which I invited naturopaths to analyse a typical primary care problem. Today, I'd like to issue a broader challenge.
With health care reform in the works, it would be wise to look north (or in my case, south) to our Canadian neighbo(u)rs, but not for the reason you think. Assuming we are able to extend health insurance coverage to millions of more Americans, we will need primary care practitioners (PCPs) who can care for these new medical consumers. In Canada, legislation to deal with a shortage of PCPs by giving modest new powers to other…
terrasig | September 7, 2009
. . . or as Dr Barrett refers to it more accurately, Insurance Reform.
On Friday, Sarah Avery of the News & Observer reported on her interview with the now-retired Pennsylvania psychiatrist who started the Quackwatch.com website in 1996 following years of investigating fraudulent health practices.
From the Quackwatch Mission Statement:
Quackwatch is now an international network of people who are concerned about health-related frauds, myths, fads, fallacies, and misconduct. Its primary focus is on quackery-related information that is difficult or impossible to get elsewhere. Founded by…
sciencepunk | August 11, 2009SÃle Lane at Sense About Science reports:
Simon Singh announced today that he will continue the fight in his libel case with the British Chiropractic Association after his application to appeal the preliminary ruling was rejected last week. He has now has the option to try and overturn that decision at an oral appeal. If this fails his case will be tried on a meaning of a phrase he did not intend and is indefensible. This highlights the problem of narrow defences that, along with high costs and wide jurisdiction, make the English libel laws so restrictive to free speech.Simon said today: "I…
sciencepunk | June 24, 2009
News just in: tomorrow's issue of Nature will feature a full page ad donated by the magazine asking people to sign up to the campaign to keep libel laws out of science. Managed by Sense About Science, the petition has already collected over 12,000 signatures, from world-renowned scientists and journalists to informed and passionate members of the public. If you haven't done so already, visit the website and show your support. You can also purchase badges and t-shirts, money raised from these will go toward a legal fund for others facing libel attacks.
The Culture, Media and Sport Select…