Denialism

Month: June 2008

  • Faith Healing in the WSJ

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    MarkH
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    The WSJ brings us news of increasing opposition to laws that would protect faith healing. Or as I call it, negligence. As usual it has required the death of innocents before people will come to grips with common sense. The recent death from untreated diabetes of an 11-year-old Wisconsin girl has invigorated opposition to obscure…

  • Naturopathy

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    MarkH
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    My little post on naturopathy was more controversial than I had anticipated. Some of the commenters gently (and otherwise) suggested that I should learn more about the subject, so I’ve been doing a little reading. Here are the basic questions: what is naturopathy, and what might it have to offer that “conventional” medicine lacks?

  • Deus ex machina

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    MarkH
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    Many of you were too busy trying to ace organic chemistry to know what a deus ex machina is. For those of you who managed to squeeze in a classics course, please stick with me anyway. Deus ex machina (“god from the machine”) is a literary device. In ancient Greek literature, a complicated dilemma was…

  • Think of it as a poll crash…

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    MarkH
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    A new blogger out there stepped on the third rail. He’s a senior law student, blogging about social justice, progressive politics, etc., and he found out that David Kirby, the Minister of Propaganda for the mercury militia, is coming to speak at his school. This nascent lawyer had the temerity to call him out, and…

  • Thanks for playing

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    MarkH
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    First, thank you for all the wonderful comments on yesterday’s post. I never really know which posts are going to rake in the comments—my favorites are usually the quietest, and some of my quickies bring ’em in by the dozen. According to my uber-seekrit data, I’ve had two unique visitors to my naturopath post. As…

  • Can’t get into med school? Legislate your own doctorate!

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    MarkH
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    I guess it’s not just doctors watching this one—an alert reader and a fellow SciBling both picked up on this one. Apparently, in my neighboring state of Minnesota (really, check the map), home to Greg Laden, PZ Myers, and lutefisk, doctor wannabes have legislated themselves into “doctorhood”. You see, there is this entity called a…

  • On being a doctor—humility and confidence

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    MarkH
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    The practice of medicine requires a careful mix of humility and confidence. Finding this balance is very tricky, as humility can become halting indecision and confidence can become reckless arrogance. Teaching these traits is a combination of drawing out a young doctor’s natural strengths, tamping down their weaknesses, and tossing in some didactic knowledge. I…

  • I’m Late! Skeptics’ Circle #88

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    MarkH
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    It’s up at Jyunri Kankei. Go and visit!

  • Adventures in staffing—a new physician

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    MarkH
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    When a resident of student presents a patient with me and I help them formulate a plan, we call it “staffing” the case. Recently while I was staffing, I was presented with a patient who speaks little English, but speaks another language fluently. Unfortunately for us, this language wasn’t Urdu, Spanish, French, Romanian, or Hindi…

  • Food dye—a new bugaboo

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    MarkH
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    If you’re around my age, you remember the disappearance of the red M&M. One day, they were just…gone. Apparently, folks worried that a red food dye not even used in M&M’s caused cancer. Well, the red ones came back, but food dyes are back in the news. The Center for Science in the Public Interest…