In this book, you will meet 16 of the most prominent people in psychology in conversational interviews that reveal their thoughts about the current state of psychology and its future. Enlightening and entertaining. Psychology is more popular than ever, but it has been criticized for scandals involving fraud, failed replications, and assisting torture. Many people
Salonpas is an over-the-counter topical NSAID used to treat pain. It’s probably safe and might be worth trying for minor pain, but the effect is small and the advertising is more hype than substance. Do you get annoyed when the media keep repeating the same commercials? I do. And recently I’ve been particularly annoyed by
Melatonin supplements are increasingly popular, but the evidence is weak and mixed. Will taking a melatonin supplement put you to sleep?I don’t understand how Facebook’s algorithms work; but I wonder if they have gotten the false impression that I suffer from insomnia, since I have recently been bombarded with information about a multitude of natural
Blue light blocking glasses and other products that block blue light promise to improve eye health along with many other questionable claims. The evidence is lacking. Blue light is part of the spectrum of sunlight. Other sources include digital screens (TVs, computers, laptops, smart phones and tablets), electronic devices, and fluorescent and LED lighting. We
Surgery or antibiotics for appendicitis? This new study can help with the decision. The standard treatment for appendicitis has long been appendectomy, the removal of the appendix. The successful use of antibiotics instead of surgery was first reported in 1956 by Dr. Coldrey in the British Medical Journal, and since then there have been several randomized trials of
Ankle sprains are common; as a family physician I treated a lot of them. My most memorable ankle sprain patient was a young woman I saw during my residency training. Doctors had diagnosed a sprain. They gave her crutches and told her not to try to bear weight on the injured ankle until the pain
Paul Offit’s new book covers the evidence for many surgeries, medications, and screening tests that have been proven ineffective and harmful yet are still being used by doctors who refuse to follow the science. Science-based medicine is all about testing medical ideas against reality. If there is abundant evidence from well-designed controlled clinical trials that
Biofield tuning uses tuning forks to assess the health of clients. This study of inter-rater agreement is a prime example of Tooth Fairy science. A study recently published in The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine is titled “Inter-Rater Agreement of Biofield Tuning: Testing a Novel Health Assessment Procedure.” It is a prime example of what
Most patients, and even many medical doctors and scientists, have not grasped how important it is to use rigorous science to evaluate claims for medical treatments. All too often, people decide to try a treatment that is irrational, that hasn’t been tested, or that has been tested and shown not to work. Why do they
We are seeing a lot of pushback on government restrictions imposed to limit the spread of COVID-19. Many people refuse to wear masks or practice social distancing. Some claim that the disease has been conquered, pointing to improvement in survival rates, and manage to ignore the increasing number of new infections and hospitalizations. Some continue
