Featured topic: coronavirus
On Science-Based Medicine,
Scott Gavura:
Wrote “Deliberately spoiled vaccines: conspiracy thinking and health professionals.” “Probably the most frightening aspect of these reports is that health professionals, who ought to know better, have been caught up in and are amplifying unfounded fears about vaccines.”
Posted “The anti-vaxxer playbook to destroy confidence in COVID-19 vaccines.” Similarly, “Orac” wrote “CCHD [Center for Countering Digital Hate] report shows that antivaxxers coordinate COVID-19 vaccine fear mongering” for Respectful Insolence.
David Gorski:
Discussed “Germ theory denial in the age of the COVID-19 pandemic.” “…there are still quacks, conspiracy theorists, and denialists who refuse to accept that the pandemic is due to a new virus that spread throughout the world because it was readily transmissible and new…”
Asked “Did the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine cause a fatal case of IPT?”
Posted “The efforts of antivaxxers to portray COVID-19 vaccines as harmful or even deadly continue apace…” “In reality, given the millions of doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines already administered all over the world, the number of serious adverse events reported has thus far been quite small.”
Steven Novella:
Wrote “One more time - masks work.” “The evidence for mask-wearing is imperfect and complex, but there is a strong signal in this data that wearing a quality mask properly and consistently protects the wearer and especially protects others.”
On Respectful Insolence, “Orac” posted:
“Andrew Wakefield spews nonsense about how the COVID-19 vaccine will ‘permanently alter your DNA’.”
“RFK Jr. doesn’t like being called antivaccine and antimask.”
“Why is Peter Doshi still an editor at The BMJ?” “Peter Doshi is at least borderline antivaccine and has been casting doubt on vaccine efficacy since 2009. Earlier this month, he posted a badly flawed ‘analysis’ casting doubt on the efficacy of the Moderna and Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines.”
“Antivaccine organizations got $850,000 in COVID-19 bailout money from the Paycheck Protection Program.”
“Is Dr. Hooman Noorchashm’s #ScreenB4Vaccine being used by RFK Jr. to spread fear of COVID-19 vaccines?” “Dr. Hooman Noorchashm has raised a concern about vaccinating people who’ve had COVID-19 before. Unfortunately, he is allowing antivaxxers to co-opt his concern to spread fear of COVID-19 vaccines.”
Edzard Ernst posted:
“Herbal solutions to the COVID-19 pandemic?” “In 2020, Medline listed 302 articles on herbal medicine for COVID-19.” Following summaries of 10 of these articles, he wrote: “What seems to emerge is this: ‘Herbalists and Co’ did not wait long to jump on the corona bandwagon; They managed to confuse not just you and me, but even politicians, presidents, and their advisers; They produced a plethora of articles implying that an endless array of herbs might be effective; In doing so, no clear consensus emerged as to which herbs are the most promising; Sound evidence seems to be not available; Clinical trials are slow to start or not even planned; Everything is based on more or less wild extrapolation; Much of what is being published is borderline irresponsible.”
January 8 – Jonathan Jarry wrote “The doctor Carl Sagan warned us about,” concerning Christiane Northrup. “Her views on the COVID-19 pandemic, shaped by her mantra that ‘it doesn’t make sense,’ are unscientific, reckless and asinine. Rarely have I witnessed such a smorgasbord of gobbledygook from someone who once had an active medical license…She wants her fans to trust their intuition above all else and reject what doesn’t feel right, a terrible piece of advice for living in our complex world.”
January 8 – A News release from the Department of Justice was entitled “Court Orders Georgia Defendants to Stop Selling Vitamin D Products as Treatments for Covid-19 and Other Diseases.” “According to the government’s complaint, the defendants sold several products that purportedly contained vitamin D3, such as ‘Immune Shot,’ ‘Immune Boost,’ and ‘Core,’ through websites maintained by the defendants. The complaint alleges that none of the products were generally recognized as safe and effective by qualified experts for any of the uses promoted by the defendants.”
January 15 – Stephen Barrett posted “Social media urged to block antivax ‘superspreaders’.” “Antivax networks promote a “master narrative” with three false messages: (1) COVID-19 is not dangerous, (2) COVID-19 vaccines are dangerous, and (3) vaccine advocates cannot be trusted.”
Other topics
Best of the blogs, January – on Science-Based Medicine,
Jann Bellamy:
Argued that “Bastyr University's MPH and MPH/ND programs should not be accredited.” “In my opinion, granting accreditation to a Bastyr MPH or MPH/ND program would give undue luster to a school that specializes in the teaching of pseudoscience and concomitantly dilute the value of an MPH degree from an accredited school.” “Naturopathy is a poor fit for an MPH program, especially considering its opposition to immunization.”
David Gorski:
Posted “All science denial is a form of conspiracy theory.”
Harriet Hall:
Wrote “Kambo: frog poison for health?” “The Kambo fad: people are applying frog poison to burns created on their skin, making them vomit repeatedly and feel terrible. They think this torture has health benefits. There’s no evidence that it does anything but poison them.”
Posted “Wim Hof, the Iceman.” “Wim Hof, the Iceman, is extraordinarily resistant to extreme cold. His Wim Hof Method (WHM) combines breathing exercises, cold exposure, and meditation. Hyperventilation has been shown to reduce the body’s response to inflammation, but Hof’s extravagant claims of health benefits are not supported by scientific evidence.”
Clay Jones:
Discussed “Topical barley flour for the management of newborn jaundice.” A study offered in support is “worthless, and it doesn’t leave me confident that the pediatricians who ran it know much about study design, jaundice, or babies.”
Stephen Novella:
Wrote about how conspiracy thinking threatens science-based medicine.
On Respectful Insolence, “Orac”:
Wrote “ICAN and Del Bigtree's ‘victory’ against the CDC: A huge nothingburger.” Antivaxxers exult in a minor website modification by the CDC (which was later reversed) even though the site continued to state that there “is no link between vaccines and autism.”
Edzard Ernst:
Wrote “A demonstration of a powerful (non-financial) conflict of interest in SCAM [so-called alternative medicine] research.” An acupuncture researcher went from writing mostly negative reviews and articles while associated with Ernst to writing mostly positive ones later. “People reading research need to be aware that it originates from a biased source, and funders who finance research would be wise to think twice about supporting researchers who are likely to generate findings that are biased and therefore false-positive. In the final analysis, such research is worse than no research at all.”
Discussed “A new definition of integrated medicine.” “This short analysis confirms yet again that IM is little more than a smokescreen behind which IM advocates try to smuggle nonsense into routine healthcare.”
Added homeopath Jennifer Jacobs to his “Alternative Medicine Hall of Fame,” because nearly every study of hers has reported positive conclusions concerning homeopathy.
Wrote “Homeopathy generates no benefits for asthma patients…nor does reflexology.”
Posted “Concerning developments in acupuncture research: is there something rotten in the state of China?” Ernst noted the publication of 20,000 acupuncture papers in 2020, only a small fraction of which were clinical trials. “Which this amount of research, one would expect to get somewhere. In particular, one would hope to slowly know whether acupuncture works and, if so, for which conditions. But this is not the case. On the contrary, the acupuncture literature is a complete mess in which it gets more and more difficult to differentiate the reliable from the unreliable, the useful from the redundant, and the truth from the lies… I feel that we are swamped with plenty of pseudo-research on acupuncture that is of doubtful (in many cases very doubtful) reliability. Eventually, this will create an overall picture for the public that is misleading to the extreme…”
Wrote “Joe Biden and so-called alternative medicine: progress in sight?” “…the appointment of [David] Kessler is one of several indications that he intends to take much more of a pro-science, pro-public health course than his predecessor.”
Discussed “Homeopathy in experimental cancer models.” A review claimed to follow the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guideline. However, Ernst wrote: “I happen to be a co-author of the PRISMA guideline and can assure you that this systematic review is very far from adhering to it. It borders on fraud to state otherwise; at the very minimum, the authors, the editor of ‘HOMEOPATHY‘, as well as the reviewers of this article are guilty of seriously misleading the public.”
Wrote “Homeopathy research from India is far from trustworthy, and today I can show you why.” Ernst described 31 papers, and noted “There is not one paper from India that does not suggest positive findings for homeopathy. I find this truly remarkable! You can, of course, interpret my findings in two very different ways: Either you assume that homeopathy is hugely effective and works always and for everything under every experimental condition. Or you conclude that Indian research into homeopathy is suspect and far from trustworthy.”
January – Harriet Hall wrote “Ayurveda: ancient superstition, not science” for Skeptical Inquirer (2021 Jan/Feb:45(1):21-3). “Ayurveda is a tribute to the imagination of early thinkers who tried to make sense of their world. But if you believe that reality matters, prescientific and prehistoric imaginings are not a rational choice for health care.”
January – The Center for Inquiry posted “Why you don’t need to worry about 5G.”
January 5 - A meta-analysis of coenzyme Q10 studies (Sazali et al. BMJ Open. 2021 Jan 5;11(1):e039358 Paper) concluded that “CoQ10 appears to have beneficial effects in reducing duration and frequency of migraine attack.”
Additions to previous months
December, 2020 – Jenkins and others reviewed “Selenium, antioxidants, cardiovascular disease, and all-cause mortality” (Am J Clin Nutr. 2020 Dec 10;112(6):1642-1652 Paper). Their conclusion was that “The addition of selenium should be considered for supplements containing antioxidant mixtures if they are to be associated with CVD and all-cause mortality risk reduction.”
December 17 – A review of Spirulina use in postmenopausal women (Bobescu et al. Mar Drugs. 2020 Dec 17;18(12):651 Paper) concluded that “Spirulina is a valuable cyanobacterium that can be used as a food supplement for the management of metabolic syndrome, and it is able to reduce the risk of cardiovascular events.”
December 21 – A review concluded that “Aromatherapy is an effective tool for the relief of PMS [premenstrual syndrome] symptoms” (Es-haghee et al. Evid Based Complement Alternat Med. 2020 Dec 21;2020:6667078 Paper).