[This article is also available in English. Thanks to Pensar for the Spanish translation.] ¿Qué son los mejillones de labios (o bordes) verdes? Mi imaginación evoca un episodio de Bob Esponja con una criatura parecida a una almeja con labios verdes, y no puedo evitar preguntarme qué pasaría si se aplicaran lápiz labial rojo. La
What do you know about Mark Twain? That he was a famous humorist? That he wrote Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn? Maybe you know he questioned many conventions like organized religion. What you may not know is that he was an enthusiastic proponent of “alternative medicine” long before the term was coined. Mark Twain, the
The (Un)Well documentary series on Netflix asks “Wellness: does it bring health and healing, or are we falling victim to false promises?” But instead of answers, it offers false balance and confusion. Netflix: a good source of entertainment, not a good source of medical information Netflix recently produced a reprehensible documentary series on “The Goop Lab”. It
A new book by Edzard Ernst provides a concise course in critical thinking as well as a wealth of good science-based information to counter the widespread misinformation about SCAM. Edzard Ernst was once a practitioner of alternative medicine. As the world’s first professor of complementary medicine (at the University of Exeter, UK) he led a
Steven Novella said it best: “Pandemics breed more than a contagious disease. They spread fear, misinformation, pseudoscience, and exploitation.” I would add, “and humor.” I have written about Covid-19 before, first on the 4th of February in an article on Science-Based Medicine about how alternative medicine had jumped on the bandwagon, then again in my March 23rd SkepDoc’s Corner
Our world has been disrupted due to legitimate fears about COVID-19. People are afraid, and unscrupulous and/or misinformed people have been quick to exploit those fears. The FTC has offered advice for consumers to help them avoid coronavirus scammers. On March 19 they published Part 2, and the FTC and FDA have sent out warning letters to these companies:
There is an old joke about a patient who had high praise for her new doctor. She had had headaches for years, and no one had ever been able to explain why. The cause remained uncertain. But the uncertainty ended when her wonderful new doctor promptly diagnosed her with cephalalgia. The joke is that cephalalgia
A new organization in Spain is trying to protect patients from becoming victims of pseudoscience. They have prepared a manifesto. Spain is standing up for science A manifesto has been organized by the Spanish organization APETP, which translates as the Association to Protect the Sick from Pseudoscientific Therapies. The organization has three main goals: to make
En la medicina tradicional china (MTC), uso médico generalizado de productos animales tales como bilis de oso, cuernos de rinoceronte, huesos de tigre y escamas de pangolín ha devenido en la práctica de la crueldad animal y ha amenazado a varias especies respecto de su extinción. Se han propuesto como remedios o encantamientos mágicos, todo
In traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), the widespread medical use of animal products such as bear bile, rhino horn, tiger bone, and pangolin scales has resulted in cruelty to animals and has threatened several species with extinction. All kinds of animal parts have been proposed as medicines or as magical charms, as in Shakespeare’s Macbeth: “Fillet of
