Results for: "Jun Mao"

Acupuncture

ASCO endorses “integrative oncology” quackery for cancer pain

Last week, the American Society of Clinical Oncology and the Society for Integrative Oncology published guidelines for treating cancer pain. These guidelines endorsed quackery like reflexology and acupuncture. The infiltration of quackademic medicine continues apace in oncology.

/ November 21, 2022

A Worthless Acupuncture Study in Cancer Patients

This study does not test the efficacy of acupuncture and was never designed to do so.

/ March 24, 2021
Acupuncture

More evidence that acupuncture doesn’t work for chronic pain

Acupuncture is a theatrical placebo whose real history has been retconned beyond recognition. A new systematic review of systematic reviews of acupuncture for chronic pain highlights that conclusion and catalogues the many weaknesses in the design of acupuncture clinical trials.

/ January 6, 2020
Quackademic medicine

Two integrative oncologists delude themselves that their specialty is science-based

Integrative oncology "integrates" quackery with oncology. Its practitioners, however, frequently delude themselves that their specialty is science-based. A recent review article by two integrative oncologists from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center expresses that delusion perfectly.

/ January 14, 2019

Myths integrative medicine sells us: “We never advocate alternative medicine without conventional medicine”

"Integrative medicine" (IM) effectively integrates quackery with real medicine. The main talking point by advocates of IM meant to deflect this criticism is that IM practitioners always use alternative medicine with conventional medicine and never advocate the use of alternative medicine alone. A new book by a prominent advocate of IM suggests that this talking point is at best self-delusion among academics...

/ January 8, 2017

Can we finally just say that acupuncture is nothing more than an elaborate placebo?

I realize that Steve blogged about this study earlier in the week, but since I also commented on this particular study as my not-so-super-secret alter ego, I figured it rated a place on SBM as well. I emphasized different aspects of the study and tried to quantify exactly why, under even the most charitable interpretation of the study possible, the effects are...

/ September 16, 2012

NIH Director Francis Collins doesn’t understand the problem with CAM

As the sole cancer surgeon among our stable of Science-Based Medicine (SBM) bloggers, I’m probably the most irritated at the infiltration of pseudoscience into academia (or, as we sometimes like to call it, quackademic medicine) in the realm of cancer. Part of the reason, of course, is that cancer is so common and that the consequences of adding pseudoscience to cancer therapy...

/ January 16, 2012