quackademic medicine

John Weeks has long been an activist for what is now known as "integrative medicine," earlier known as "complementary and alternative medicine"(CAM). Basically, for many years Mr. Weeks has been at the forefront of encouraging the "integration" of quackery with real medicine and promoting what I like to refer to as "quackademic medicine," a perfect term to describe the increasing encroachment of pseudoscience and quackery in medical academia in the form of—you guessed it—integrative medicine. Despite his having zero background in scientific research or the design and execution of experiments…
Last week, the University of California, Irvine (UCI) announced that Susan and Henry Samueli were donating $200 million for it to set up a massive new integrative medicine initiative. The plan would basically transform biomedical sciences and medical education at UCI—and not in a good way. Remember what "integrative medicine" is. What is being "integrated" into medicine is, of course, quackery. Oh, sure, integrative medicine also emphasizes lifestyle modification, such as diet and exercise, but that is part of "conventional medicine" already. There is no good scientific or medical rationale…
It's not infrequently that, whenever I complain about the increasing infiltration of quackery and pseudoscience into medicine, I sometimes lament that skeptics and supporters of science-based medicine are massively outgunned, because we are. Thus, we have the continued growth of what I like to refer to as "quackademic medicine," the infiltration of pseudoscience into medical academia in the form of whole divisions, departments, and institutes dedicated to studying fairy dust like acupuncture, naturopathy, and other "unconventional" treatments that are then "integrated" into medicine. It's not…
If there's one form of quackery that is among the most "respected," it has to be acupuncture. I've often speculated about why this might be, and the best that I can come up with is that doctors are a bit more open to acupuncture because it involves sticking actual needles into the body. It's very easy to ignore the mystical, vitalistic BS about "redirecting the flow of qi" because doctors can easily handwave and postulate other, more scientific-sounding explanations, such as that it releases endorphins or adenosine. If that doesn't work, then acupuncturists add electricity and thereby rebrand…
If there's one thing about the march of the pseudomedical entity known as "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM), "integrative medicine," "complementary and integrative medicine" (CIM), "complementary and integrative health" (CIH), it's that over the last 25 years or so its progress towards being mainstreamed has appeared utterly relentless. I like to paraphrase Kyle Reese, the warrior from the future sent back in time to save Sarah Connor in The Terminator: "Listen, and understand. That terminator is out there. It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel…
Surprisingly, I made it through an entire three day weekend without posting anything to the blog. Believe it or not, this is a good thing. It means that I actually worked on my grant that's due at the end of the week. Still, a blogger's gotta blog; so I can't just shut down until the end of the week. So, hwere we go. I've long lamented the creeping infiltration of quackery into medical academia in which modalities once considered quackery, such as acupuncture, reiki, naturopathy, homeopathy, and various other dubious treatments, have found their way into what should be bastions of science-…
Although the requirements vary from state to state, all states require that physicians obtain a certain number of CME credits every licensure period in order to renew their medical licenses. Also, although again the specific requirements vary by specialty board, in order to retain board certification physicians and surgeons must meet certain specific CME credit requirements. Indeed, a particularly annoying new requirement is that a certain number of these credits be "MOC" credits, where MOC stands for "maintenance of certification," a particularly contentious topic among physicians. Basically…
I've been writing about a phenomenon that I like to refer to as "quackademic medicine," defined as the infiltration into academic medical centers and medical school of unscientific and pseudoscientific treatment modalities that are unproven or disproven. I didn't coin the term. To the best of my knowledge, Dr. Robert W. Donnell did nine years ago. However, I adopted it with a vengeance, so much so that a lot of people think I coined the term. In any case, I first began sounding the alarm about the infiltration of quackery like acupuncture, "energy medicine," naturopathy, homeopathy,…
That the Cleveland Clinic has become one of the leading institutions, if not the leading institution, in embracing quackademic medicine is now indisputable. Indeed, 2017 greeted me with a reminder of just how low the Clinic has gone when the director of its Wellness Institute published a blatantly antivaccine article for a local publication, which led to a firestorm of publicity in the medical blogosphere, social media, and conventional media to the point where the Cleveland Clinic's CEO Dr. Toby Cosgrove had to respond. Dr. Cosgrove was—shall we say?—not particularly convincing. Indeed, even…
I like to refer to homeopathy as The One Quackery To Rule Them All, so much so that I almost always call it that within the first two paragraphs of any post I write about some tasty bit of homeopathy pseudoscience. It's also a wonderful tool for teaching critical thinking because it's easy to explain and people grasp intuitively why homeopathy is pseudoscience when it's explained properly to them. Basically, it's because of homeopathy's two laws. The first is the Law Similars, which states that, relieve a symptom, you must use something that causes the symptom. It's nonsense. There's no…
I've been pretty hard on The Cleveland Clinic over the years, but justifiably so. After all, The Cleveland Clinic is one of the leading centers of quackademic medicine in the US; i.e., an academic medical center that studies and uses quackery as though it were legitimate medicine. Of course, this is a problem that is not in any way limited to The Cleveland Clinic. A decade ago, I tried to keep track of which academic medical centers had "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) or "integrative medicine" programs that integrated quackery like acupuncture, chiropractic, naturopathy, reiki…
It’s been a long time since I’ve encountered Glenn Sabin. You might remember him, though. He runs a consulting firm, FON Therapeutics, which is dedicated to the promotion of “integrative” health, or, as I like to put it, the “integration of pseudoscience and quackery with science-based medicine. What I remember most about Sabin is how he once proclaimed that “integrative medicine” was a brand, not a specialty. Unfortunately, he was correct in his assessment. Basically, he declared, “CAM [complementary and alternative medicine] is dead. The evolution of evidence-based, personalized integrative…
Back in the day, Deepak Chopra used to be a frequent topic of this blog. He still pops up from time to time, such as when irony meters everywhere immediately self-destructed after Chopra criticized Donald Trump for being insufficiently evidence-based or when, after I wrote a post asking why medical conferences keep inviting Chopra to speak, Chopra was so displeased that he actually posted a video attacking me (and other skeptics who’ve criticized his pseudoscience). Unfortunately, Chopra truly is one of the most influential people in “integrative medicine” today. To be honest, I’ve never…
I’ve frequently written about what I like to refer to as “quackademic medicine,” defined as the infiltration of outright quackery into medical academia, particularly medical schools and academic medical centers. There’s no doubt that it’s a significant problem as hallowed institutions like Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center embrace nonsense, pseudoscience, and quackery in the name of “integrative medicine.” It goes far beyond MSKCC, however, with Dana-Farber and other elite institutions having apparently bought into the need to study prescientific vitalistic quackery. One area that’s…
Orac is currently hiding from the Federation in an undisclosed location (somewhere warm and out of the country, the better to avoid election news after having cast an absentee ballot), where he is charging his Tarial cells, the better to return fully recharged and ready to dive back into the massive piles of woo awaiting him when he returns. Since it’s only a brief respite, I had been planning on either reposting material from Orac’s other known hideout on the web, the better not to let this blog lie fallow and lack for Insolence, Respectful and not-so-Respectful, as indicated depending upon…
Although I did not coin it, I frequently use the term “quackademic medicine” because, unfortunately, there’s a lot of quackademic medicine around. Although regular readers know what the term means, i always feel obligated to briefly explain what quackademic medicine is, for the benefit of any newbie who might happen upon this blog. Basically, it is a term used to describe an increasingly common and alarming phenomenon, the infiltration of rank quackery and pseudoscience into medical academia. You might think it impossible or unbelievable, but it’s anything but. Beginning around a quarter of a…
A little over a month ago, I wrote about how proponents of "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM), now more frequently called "integrative medicine," go to great lengths to claim nonpharmacological treatments for, well, just about anything as somehow being CAM or "integrative." The example I used was a systematic review article published by several of the bigwigs at that government font of pseudoscience, the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) about CAM approaches for the management of chronic pain. You can read my whole post for yourself if you want the…
As hard as it is for me to believe, I’ve been writing about homeopathy for more than a decade now. Regular readers, of course, know that homeopathy is quackery, utter pseudoscience based on prescientific vitalism based on two “laws”: the Law of Similars and the Law of Infinitesimals. The former states that, to relieve a symptom, you use a substance that causes that symptom in healthy people. There is, of course, no science or logic to support this as a general principle other than sympathetic magic. The latter Law states that to make a remedy stronger, you must dilute it. That in itself is…
Whenever I refer to quackademic medicine and how the infiltration of quackery into medical academia has led to unethical clinical that are not only pseudoscientific wastes of money but potentially downright harmful to patients, two always come to mind. The first is the trial that tested the late Nicholas Gonzalez’s protocol for advanced pancreatic cancer, comparing it to standard-of-care chemotherapy. His protocol basically involves a combination of supplements (up to 150 a day), various vegetable juices, and, yes, the infamous coffee enema—several a day, actually. It’s basically a mystical,…
One of the things that first led me to understand the dangers of quackademic medicine was a trial known as the Trial to Assess Chelation Therapy, or TACT. Chelation therapy, as you might recall, is the infusion of a chelating agent, or a chemical that binds heavy metals and makes it easier for the kidney to secrete them, in order to treat acute heavy metal poisoning. Unfortunately, quacks of all stripes have latched on to chelation therapy to treat a number of diseases and conditions. For instance, antivaccine quacks like to use chelation therapies to treat autistic children using the…