APRIL 2023 NEWS
Featured topic: coronavirus
On Science-Based Medicine,
David Gorski posted:
“Peter Gøtzsche teams with an antivaxxer to exaggerate the harms of COVID-19 vaccines.” “Peter Gøtzsche, formerly leader of the Nordic Cochrane Center, has teamed with Maryanne Demasi to write a systematic review of the ‘harms’ of COVID-19 vaccination. Besides accepting the highly dubious methodology behind one study, their preprint is yet another example of how EBM [evidence-based medicine] can be corrupted to promote antivax ideas.”
“Neil deGrasse Tyson makes the unforced error of ‘debating’ antivax propagandist Del Bigtree on The Highwire.” “This incident demonstrates quite well why it is almost never a good idea for a scientist to agree to ‘debate’ science deniers.”
“ProtocolKills.com: Repackaging an old narrative about conventional medicine versus alternative medicine for COVID-19.” “Quacks claim that medicine, not the disease, kills, with their nostrums as the cure. ProtocolKills.com shows that victims and their families are often their best spokespeople because they are so sympathetic and questioning their testimonials is easily portrayed as attacking very sympathetic victims.”
Jonathan Howard posted:
“Yes, schools were closed in Sweden.” “Sweden’s response will be debated for decades. However, anyone who engages in the absurd fantasy they took no measures to control the virus or that they paid no price for their early inaction should be completely ignored. Here’s the reality.”
“A phony invitation for 'discussion and debate'.” “Phony calls for ‘discussion and debate’ about vaccinating children create the illusion that discussion and debate hasn’t already occurred.”
“'We Want Them Infected' – my book is done!” Dr. Howard describes his new book.
Clay Jones posted:
“Children and COVID-19: a few facts and figures from the pandemic’s first three years.”
On Respectful Insolence, “Orac” posted:
“Lying with statistics in Florida, COVID-19 vaccine edition.” “Remember that Florida Department of Health study that suggested that COVID-19 vaccines were more dangerous to young men than COVID? Surprise! It turns out that important results were left out, all to lie with statistics and make the vaccines look worse…This is at least borderline scientific fraud in the service of a political narrative, political scientific fraud, if you will.”
A followup to the previous item: “Dr. Joseph Ladapo: Busted lying with statistics about COVID-19 vaccines.” “Surprise! Surprise! Politico has busted Dr. Joseph Ladapo for having altered a Florida Department of Health study to lie with statistics and make COVID-19 vaccines look more dangerous than COVID-19 for men under 40.”
“How antivaxxers ‘think’ (that vaccine advocates think).” “More importantly, their belief that, not only do they understand science as well as experts, but they understand ‘more’ shows one of the most important aspects of how antivaxxers think—and how they think vaccine advocates think. It’s the arrogance of ignorance.”
“’I know you are, but what am I?’ John Leake and Peter McCullough vs. conspiracy theories.” “COVID-19 cranks and antivaxxers John Leake and Dr. Peter McCullough are unhappy at correctly being labeled conspiracy theorists.”
“Byram Bridle is upset at Timothy Caulfield because he ‘won’t debate’ antivaxxers.”
“Quoth antivaxxers: ‘Big pharma got Tucker Carlson!’.” “Tucker Carlson was fired on Monday. Antivaxxers are blaming big pharma because he had aired a segment attacking Pfizer and its COVID-19 vaccine.”
Other topics
Best of the blogs, April – on Science-Based Medicine,
Marc Crislip:
Posted “Acupuncture myths.” Crislip responds to ten alleged misconceptions about acupuncture.
Scott Gavura:
Wrote “TikTok driving chlorophyll supplement fad.” There is no evidence that chlorophyll is useful for any medical condition. Supplements often consist of chlorophyllin, a derivative containing copper instead of magnesium. Ingestion of large amounts of such supplements presents risk of adverse effects from the copper.
Posted “Melatonin quality varies widely.” A study of melatonin gummie products (Cohen et al. JAMA. 2023 Apr 25;329(16):1401-2) found that the quantity of melatonin ranged from 74% to 347% of the stated amount.
David Gorski:
Posted “Why antivaxxers reject the concept of scientific consensus as a ‘manufactured construct’.” “Cranks view any criticism or rejection of their views as ‘crushing dissent’ rather than rejecting bad science. As long as that is true, they are likely to continue to reject the very concept of a scientific consensus in science. After all, the whole idea is to promote the idea that nothing is truly knowable, and the scientific consensus is an obstacle to that..”
Clay Jones:
Posted “Lithium in tap water probably doesn’t cause autism.” “A recent study found an association between lithium in tap water and a diagnosis of autism in Danish children. Is it time to turn off the tap and grab the bottled water? Not so fast…It is likely the result of a combination of genetic and environmental factors leading to a variety of changes in the brain that we have given the autism label, and it is definitely possible that exposure to lithium in drinking water played a role in some children with the diagnosis. This study is interesting, and it should be followed up. In the meantime, I don’t see this as a reason for pregnant people to panic or to avoid tap water entirely.”
Steven Novella:
Posted “What is dopamine detox?” “Just another fad that oversimplifies a complex problem to sell an easy fix.”
Wrote “Skeptical of the carnivore diet.” “The carnivore diet is just another diet fad focusing on eliminating allegedly bad food categories and restricting diet to only good food categories. The theoretical justification for this approach is highly flawed, and there is no empirical evidence to support it. Further, there are multiple lines of evidence that restricting one’s diet to only meat and eggs is a bad thing for health.”
Posted “Ashwagandha – an herbal TikTok sensation.” “Ashwagandha is another dubious herbal products [sic] marketing with inadequate evidence and poor logic.” See also April 5 item below.
On Respectful Insolence, “Orac”:
Posted “Something I never thought I’d see: RFK Jr. is apparently running for President.” Kennedy “has consistently been a leader in the antivaccine movement.”
Edzard Ernst:
Discussed guided imagery for postoperative pain control. “I guess that both groups receive standard post-op care and the control group received nothing in addition. This would mean that the observed effect might be entirely due to placebo and other non-specific effects. If that is so, the authors’ conclusion is not accurate. I happen to think that guided imagery is a promising albeit under-researched therapy. Therefore, I am particularly frustrated to see that the few trials that do emerge of this option are woefully inadequate to determine its value.”
Posted “Ayurvedic herbal supplements and homeopathic ‘immune boosters’ might be dangerous.” A survey of items taken by liver disease patients in India found contamination with heavy metals and other dangerous substances.
Wrote “Effects of spinal manipulation or mobilization for lumbar disc herniation with radiculopathy.” Improvement was better with MOB (mobilization) plus NM (neurodynamic mobilization) than with SMT (spinal manipulation therapy) plus NM. “Yet again, I find it hard to resist playing the devil’s advocate: had the researchers added a third group with sham-MOB, they would have perhaps found that this group would have recovered even faster. In other words, this study might show that SMT is no good for DHR (which I find unsurprising), but it does NOT demonstrate MOB to be an effective therapy.”
Posted “Auricular acupuncture on postpartum blues? No, I think it’s nonsense!” There are concerns over whether the study was truly blinded. “the results of this trial could have easily been brought about, not by the alleged effects of acupressure, but by placebo and other non-specific effects.”
Discussed a meta-analysis of manual therapy for adolescent idiopathic scoliosis. The authors found that “there is insufficient data to determine the effectiveness of spinal manipulation limited by the very low quality of included studies,” and recommended more studies. However, “The treatment of idiopathic scoliosis depends on the age, curve size, and progression of the condition. Therapeutic options include observation, bracing, physiotherapy, and surgery. They do NOT include MT because it is neither a plausible nor effective solution to this problem. It follows that further studies are not warranted and should be discouraged.”
Posted “Reiki: effective in reducing stress and anxiety?” “…Reiki lacks plausibility and is most unlikely, in my view, to have any specific therapeutic effects. This means that the most likely explanation for the extraordinary results of this study is the de-blinding of some of the patients in group 2 or some other source of bias…”
Wrote “Stress management for patients with irritable bowel syndrome.” “Considering the actual evidence, I find the conclusions rather odd. Would it not have been more honest to state something along the following lines?: There is currently no convincing evidence to suggest that stress management benefits IBS patients.”
Discussed an article on informed consent for chiropractors who treat children. “According to its title, the paper was supposed to deal with consent for chiropractic pediatric care. It almost totally avoided the subject and certainly did not list the information chiropractors must give to parents before commencing treatment. Considering the arguments that the article did provide has brought me to the conclusion that chiropractors who treat children are out of touch with reality and seem in danger of committing child abuse.”
Wrote “How reliable are the claims made by naturopathic influencers?”
Posted “Homeopathy for cancer? Unsurprisingly, the evidence is not positive.” A review by Wagenknecht and others (J Cancer Res Clin Oncol. 2023 May;149(5):1785-1810 Paper) was discussed. The review concluded “no evidence for positive effectiveness of homeopathy can be verified.” Ernst noted “Some might argue that, of course, homeopathy cannot change the natural history of cancer, but it might improve the quality of life of those patients who believe in it via a placebo response. I would still oppose this notion: there are many effective treatments in the supportive treatment of cancer, and it seems much better to use those options and tell patients the truth about homeopathy.”
Noted “Possibly the worst acupuncture study of the year so far.” The study concerned pain from temporo-mandibular disorders (TMD). “This study did not include a control group. Such uncontrolled studies are not necessarily useless. In areas where there is no prior evidence, they can be a reasonable starting point for further research. In the case of TMD/acupuncture, however, this does not imply. Here we already have about a dozen controlled trials. This means an uncontrolled study cannot possibly contribute to our knowledge. This means that the present study is useless. And that, in turn, means it is unethical.”
April - Macrina Wang and others wrote “Verified misinformation: 'Blue Check' twitter accounts are flooding the platform with false claims.” As noted in Consumer Health Digest, “COVID-19 was the most common focus for falsehoods—15 of the accounts baselessly claimed in 66 tweets and retweets that COVID-19 vaccines were dangerous or have caused mass death, AIDS, strokes, stillbirths, or other injuries; far-right commentator Stew Peters (@RealStewPeters) falsely claimed in a March 2 tweet that men who had received mRNA COVID-19 vaccines ‘are essentially infertile and their penises are rotting off’; other questionable claims included COVID-19 virus is human-made or was intentionally engineered as a bioweapon (16 tweets), ivermectin is a proven COVID-19 treatment (7 tweets), and mRNA COVID-19 vaccines are gene therapies that change people’s DNA (4 tweets)”
April 4 – Stuart Vyse wrote “Can we trust peer review journals?” The article discusses the growth of “predatory journals” that publish papers with only very weak peer review.
April 5 – Dani Blum wrote “All about ashwagandha, the stress relief supplement of the moment.” See also Steven Novella post above.
April 5 – Truth in Advertising has complained to the FDA and FTC over hair growth claims by Nutrafol. According to the group, studies supposedly showing the effectiveness of the product are flawed and unconvincing.
April 7 – Jonathan Jarry wrote “Andrew Huberman has supplements on the brain.” “It saddens me to see such a gifted educator promote poorly supported bro science to so many people…”
April 17 – Jamie Hale wrote “Examing the Mozart Effect and intelligence.” “Listening to Mozart may provide short term benefits for intelligence and other mental skills. That is, it may be beneficial if it leads to increased arousal. There don’t appear to be specific characteristics of Mozart’s music that lead to improved performance. Some research indicates the Mozart Effect occurs for those with epilepsy. Other research indicates little to no specific benefits of listening to Mozart; much more research is needed in this area.”
April 20 – Beth Mole wrote “The FDA would like to remind you not to put amniotic fluid in your eyes.” The products, marketed for dry eye and inflammation, are not FDA approved and have not been shown to be safe and effective.
April 27 – Nick Tiller reviewed electric muscle stimulation. “A generous interpretation of the many studies would be that electrical stimulation devices, when used during regular strength training, may augment exercise performance, potentially aiding in muscle mass and strength gains. But the data are of questionable quality, with a high risk of bias in at least one important aspect of study design. Moreover, there’s no evidence that EMS is effective in the absence of exercise.”
April 28 – Jonathan Jarry wrote “The World Health Organization has a pseudoscience problem.” “In trying to ensure everyone has access to healthcare, the WHO promotes homeopathy, traditional Chinese medicine, and rhythmical embrocations.”
Additions to previous months
March 15 – Truth in Advertising discussed TruHeight, which markets vitamins to aid children’s growth. “TruHeight makes some tall claims about its products and its money-back guarantees – claims that fall apart upon closer scrutiny.”
March 29 - Another Truth in Advertising article concerned Quietum Plus. “TINA.org finds several issues with marketing of purported tinnitus supplement.”