Denialism

Author: MarkH

  • Watch the returns here!

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    Watch it happen live! And if I can, I’ll though in some useless editorializing. Now fivethirtyeight and CNN have excellent widgets to watch as well. Fivethirtyeight.com is especially cool, as it has developed a nice reputation for actually being right. Currently, they are projecting a rather wide victory for Obama. Ohio an Penn!!!!!

  • Discourse give me hives

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    But a fascinating lesson in scientific discourse is currently underway in the blogosphere. It all started with a harmless little analysis of a letter published in NEJM. The strange part (to those of us who live here) was that the authors responded. On the blog. For real. And they were kinda pissed (in the American…

  • Allergies of the first kind—type I hypersensitivity explained in context

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    If you have kids you have probably been exposed to the idea that more kids have food allergies these days. Well, the data seem to bear this out. There are several hypotheses about why this is so, but not a lot of data. Rather than engage in speculation, I’d like to wade back into the…

  • If you read no other posts this week…

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    …you must at least read this one. As first person histories go, this one is tops.

  • East meets West at Beth Israel—Cage Match!

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    When those of us who practice real medicine write about implausible medical claims, we are often accused of lacking compassion, as if offering false hope is the same as compassion. We are also accused of turning away from therapies that “couldn’t hurt”. After all, if someone wants to use aromatherapy, what’s the harm? The truth…

  • Tagged!

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    Arghhh! I hate blog memes, but rules are rules. As Robert Service said, “a promise made is a debt unpaid, and the trail has its own stern code,” and although I’m not sure how that applies, I’m forced to respond. From Abel over at TerraSig comes a random blog meme…literally. For the uninitiated a blog…

  • Im kvelling!

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    I told you earlier about Proposal 2, a proposed constitutional amendment here in Michigan. The lies being spread about this proposal are thick and vicious. Orac also goes into a bit of detail about the dishonest tactics being used, mostly by religious groups, to try and stop this prop. Just to remind you, Prop 2…

  • Antibiotic-associated colitis—a difficile problem

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    It’s that time of year again—the time of year when everyone gets the sniffles, and everyone wants an antibiotic. Even folks who know better, who know intellectually that an antibiotic isn’t going to fix their viral illness still harbor a strong suspicion that it just might help—and it couldn’t hurt, right? Well, I’ve got two…

  • Why good medicine requires materialism

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    MarkH
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    I don’t like to repost, but Steve Novella has some great pieces up right now, and this is directly related. –PalMD s I’ve clearly demonstrated in earlier posts, I’m no philosopher. But I am a doctor, and, I believe, a good one at that, and I find some of this talk about “non-materialist” perspectives in…

  • Do physicians really believe in placebos?

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    This article is cross-posted at Science-Based Medicine. Check it out. –PalMD In a previous post, I argued that placebo is an artifact of certain clinical interactions, rather than a treatment that we can exploit. Apparently, there are a whole lot of doctors out there who don’t agree with me. Or are there? A recent study…