Denialism

Author: MarkH

  • Pending hiatus

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    MarkH
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    On Saturday, I’ll be heading up north. Way up north. To the north where the precious intertubes do not reach, where pagers are for skipping across the water, and cellphones are coasters. It’s that far north. I’m going to take pictures, and take notes, and my plan is to have a bunch of non-medical, non-debunking…

  • Fountain pens

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    MarkH
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    I love fountain pens, but I’m far to busy for the regular ritual of cleaning, filling, etc. Most of my day is spent scrawling notes or typing on a keyboard. But there is one task for which only a fountain pen will do.

  • Pain, privacy, and safety

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    MarkH
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    Abel over at TerraSig dug up an interesting story about a man who was “murdered” killed rendered not-living (in the moral if not legal sense) by a “fake chiropractor” (although it’s not clear to me what science separates a “real” from a “fake” chiropractor). One of the commenters wondered if lack of health insurance had…

  • Placebo effect, not placebo treatment

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    MarkH
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    In the course of reading the comments in the last several posts, I’ve come upon many mentions of the “placebo effect”. Steve Novella has a few good posts on the placebo effect, but I’d like to take a look at the clinical view.

  • Goodbye, Mr. Russert

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    MarkH
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    Tim Russert died suddenly today. I admired his journalism, his ability to press questions that has become so rare. He didn’t seem to suffer from the “two-side-ism” that has become so common in today’s journalism; he realized that some issues don’t have two valid opposing views. But others will eulogize him. I’d like to talk…

  • 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…