Category: SkepDoc’s Corner
A column by Harriet Hall
I Donât Know Whatâs in It.
A woman who was interviewed on the news explained why she refuses to accept a vaccine for COVID-19: âI donât know whatâs in it.â At first glance, that sounds like a very reasonable stance. Surely it is foolish to ingest or inject something when you donât know what youâre getting. If everyone followed that policy, …
Kailo and Other Patches for Pain
I keep seeing advertisements and testimonials for Kailo patches to relieve pain. They claim to: Doesnât that sound great? Are you in pain? Just stick on a patch and the pain goes away in one minute. Unfortunately, the âscientific evidenceâ isnât what they think. More about that later. Kailo patches use a patented technology; an array …
Penicillin Allergy?
Are you one of the 10 percent of Americans who report being allergic to penicillin? Did you know that less than 1 percent of the population are truly allergic? Did you know that 80 percent of people with true IgE-mediated penicillin allergy lose their sensitivity after ten years? Did you realize that âthe use of …
Supplements: Misguided Marketing
If marketers want to persuade me to take a dietary supplement, they are going about it the wrong way. A typical recent email said I could fight aging, boost immunity, and feel energized with doctor-endorsed NMN supplement Elevant. They even offered to send me free samples. Probably worth the price! J The claims: âFor todayâs …
Does a Baby Aspirin a Day Keep the Doctor Away?
For years, we have been told that most adults should take a baby aspirin every day to help prevent heart attacks and strokes. Now we are told not to do that because it doesnât work. What is going on? Why canât science make up its mind? The recommendations are not exactly simple and straightforward; the …
Will Intermittent Fasting Help You Lose Weight?
Are you having trouble losing weight? So are a lot of other people. Have you tried intermittent fasting? Should you? According to a survey by the International Food Information Council, intermittent fasting was the most popular weight loss diet in 2018. Some have called it a fad whose adverse effects have not been sufficiently studied, and …
Should I Get a Second Booster?
In China, COVID-19 vaccination is required for everyone and sometimes force and coercion are used. In the United States, vaccines are never required. No one is forced to get vaccinated, although consequences have been imposed; for instance, the unvaccinated have been refused employment for certain jobs and not allowed to attend public schools. The CDC …
Multiple Chemical Sensitivity
I have long been skeptical of the diagnosis of multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS). Hereâs what I wrote about it four years ago in an article in Skeptic magazine: An episode of ABCâs Nightline news show about Dr. Reaâs controversial diagnoses and treatments aired in 2009. I was appalled by the interviews with a patient diagnosed by Dr. Rea as …
Can These Eyedrops Replace Reading Glasses?
Youâve probably seen the ads. Vuity is a new prescription eyedrop. An article in Scientific American says, âThese drops could replace your reading glasses.â Could they really? How can that be? Do they really work? Kind of, sort of ⊠for some people ⊠for a few hours ⊠maybe. Itâs no panacea. The devil …
Dog Food Is Not Evidence
An individual told me in an email that I was wrong about dietary supplements and urged me to read a bag of dog food to get better informed. I get my information from peer-reviewed, randomized, controlled scientific studies, not from dog food bags. I donât have his permission to share his email, and I donât …
Number-One Pharmacist Recommended
Some drugs are being marketed with the claim that they are the number-one recommendation of pharmacists. This is unfortunate. A minority of pharmacists have received additional training in clinical pharmacy and provide direct patient care as part of a team of health care providers managing complex cases. Most pharmacists have not had such training and …
A Disappointing Testimonial for Whole Body Cryotherapy
As a longtime subscriber to Readerâs Digest, I love the jokes and enjoy the stories, but I donât trust their forays into science. I was particularly disturbed by an âI tried itâ feature on whole body cryotherapy (WBC) in the latest issue (December 2021/January 2022). The writer starts by saying doctors have known the power …
Two New Promising COVID-19 Drugs – Analysis and Questions
The COVID-19 pandemic isnât over yet. Despite the success of vaccines, people continue to get the disease. Most cases are in the unvaccinated, but even those who have been fully vaccinated can have âbreakthroughâ infections. Relief appears to be in sight. Two new antiviral drugs promise effective treatment in pill form. Well-designed randomized controlled clinical …
UPWalker: A $649 Solution for a Non-Problem
Sometimes TV commercials are more entertaining than the programs. My husband and I laugh every time we see the commercials for the UPWalker on TV. According to their website: âUnlike walkers that force you to hunch over putting painful pressure on your wrists and back, the UPWalker is designed to support you in a secure …
Do Surgeons Who Wear N95 Masks Have Lower Oxygen Levels and Make More Mistakes?
An individual who was both an anti-vaxxer and anti-masker claimed that âstudies were done that show that surgeons who wore N95 masks for extended periods of time were shown to have decreased oxygen levels and were more prone to mistakes.â His argument was âimagine what that would do to kids who were forced to wear masks all day …
Living with Uncertainty
Uncertainty is uncomfortable. It is only natural to want certainty. It is more comfortable to be certain and wrong than to be uncertain. Like anyone else, I would like to be comfortable, but I think truth matters. Iâd rather be uncertain than wrong; wouldnât you? As Voltaire said, âUncertainty is an uncomfortable position. But certainty …
Green-Lipped Mussels for Arthritis
What are green-lipped mussels? My imagination conjures up a SpongeBob SquarePants episode featuring a clam-like creature with green lips, and I canât help wondering what would happen if they applied red lipstick? Imagination can be fun; but to get back to reality, green-lipped mussels are a shellfish naturally found in New Zealand and now cultivated …
The FDA Blundered When It Approved Alzheimer Drug
The FDA has a difficult job. It is understaffed and underfunded. It has to walk a very fine line between prematurely approving a new drug that may turn out to be useless or even harmful and rejecting or delaying approval of a drug when earlier approval might have been saving lives. On the whole, I …
Vaccine Refusers Are Not Stupid
We now have several vaccines for COVID-19. They have been adequately tested. They are safe and effective; and as more people have gotten vaccinated, infection rates, hospitalization rates, and death rates have fallen. Herd immunity may be in sight. Getting vaccinated seems like a no-brainer, but there are still a lot of people who are …
COVID-19 Tests: Can You Trust the Results?
If your COVID-19 test was negative, can you breathe a sigh of relief? What if itâs a false negative? If it was positive, is that reliable evidence of infection or might it be a false positive result? How trustworthy are these tests? As with so much in science, the answer is complicated; itâs not a …
No, No, No, NO! Testimonials Are Not Evidence!
We are programmed to respond to testimonials. Blame evolution. For most of human history, we had only two ways to learn about the world: our own observations and what other people told us about their experiences. Gathering information from others gave us a survival advantage. Unfortunately, those testimonials can be unreliable. We now have something …
âClinically TestedââWhat Does that Mean?
They used to call useless treatments âsnake oil.â We donât hear that term anymore; now they may be called âdietary supplementsâ or ânatural remedies.â A dietary supplement may contain a single herb or a combination of several ingredients. The ads frequently say they have been âclinically testedâ or âclinically proven.â Do you believe that? I …
Self Esteem Is Overrated
Most people believe that fostering self-esteem in children will have many benefits, from happiness to better school performance, but that belief is not supported by the evidence. We are encouraged to reward children and not punish them, to praise them not only for real accomplishments but also for trivial successes and even failures (âeverybodyâs a …
Adeleâs Sirtfood Diet
I recently got an email newsletter from TRC Natural Medicines. One of the articles was âUnderstanding the Hype Behind Adeleâs Sirtfood Diet.â It’s brief enough to quote in its entirety:  âEnglish singer-songwriter Adele has made headlines in recent months for her dramatic weight loss. You might start getting questions about the diet she followedâitâs called the …
Donât Ice Sprains
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 …
Bogus Treatments for Bogus Diagnosis Are Killing Patients
Lyme Disease Is Real Lyme disease is an infection caused by Borrelia burgdorferi bacteria. It is transmitted to humans through the bite of infected blacklegged ticks. According to the CDC, âtypical symptoms include fever, headache, fatigue, and a characteristic skin rash called erythema migrans. If left untreated, infection can spread to joints, the heart, and the nervous system.â A …
New Contraceptive Drug Makes No Sense
I subscribe to The Medical Letter to learn about new drugs. I am frequently appalled by their cost. For example, a yearâs treatment with Ozanimod, a drug recently approved for multiple sclerosis, costs $84,800. And some new drugs cost much, much more than that. A gene therapy drug from Novartis currently holds the record: 2.1 …
Are You Dehydrated?
Do you worry that you are or might become dehydrated? Do you feel guilty if you donât drink eight to ten glasses of water a day? Are you tethered to a water bottle? Have you been frightened by warnings on the internet? âEauâ dear! âWaterâ you thinking? You may have been âfloodedâ with a tsunami …
Deuterium Depleted Water
I recently learned there was a thing called deuterium depleted water (DDW). First, I asked âWhaat?â and then I asked âWhy?â The atoms of the most common isotope (99.99 percent) of hydrogen contain only one proton, one electron, and no neutrons. Deuterium is an isotope of hydrogen with one neutron and one proton in its …
One Less Thing to Worry About: Undercooked Pork
We have plenty of things to worry about: the pandemic, global warming, the economy, racial tensions, and much, much more. But here is some good news to ease the worry burden: you can stop worrying about eating undercooked pork. Most people agree that undercooked pork is bad, but not everyone can explain why. The âwhyâ …
Pandemic Stories in the News: Something to Laugh AboutÂ
Steven Novella said it best: âPandemics breed more than a contagious disease. They spread fear, misinformation, pseudoscience, and exploitation.â I would add, âand humor.â I have written about COVID-19 before, first on the February 4 in an article on Science-Based Medicine about how alternative medicine had jumped on the bandwagon, then again in my March …
COVID-19: A Field Day for Scams and Misinformation
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 …
A Test for Earlier Diagnosis of Autism? Not Convincing
Autism is diagnosed on clinical grounds by observing the childâs behavior. There is no blood test or any other objective test to diagnose it. But that hasnât stopped people from claiming to have found one. Among other candidates, a saliva test has been proposed, and now an eye scan. In summer 2019, a press release …
Bigfoot Reconsidered
I recently came across an advertisement for a âOne-Of-A-Kind Adventure,â a Bigfoot Adventures Tour Company endeavor that offers single-day, multi-day, and even Bigfoot-by-bike experiences. Their website promises to take you to sites where Bigfoot has been spotted numerous times and tracks have been found. They utilize âproven methods to call one inâ and carry high-tech …
Why âTrying It for Yourselfâ Is a Bad Idea
When I write about a treatment that has been inadequately tested (or that has never been tested or has been tested and shown not to work), someone always asks if I have tried it myself. Apparently, they believe it really works, and if only I would try it for myself, I would believe too. If …
Donât Believe the Ads: Dietary Supplements Donât Cure Tinnitus
Tinnitus, or ringing in the ears, is a hallucination. The sounds canât be heard by anyone else; they are illusory sensations produced by the brain. For some, it is only a minor annoyance; for others, it interferes with sleep and quality of life and sometimes causes severe suffering. There is no cure. Nothing will stop …
The Pharma Shill Gambit Is Stupid
I am regularly accused of being a shill for Big Pharma. They are supposedly paying me lavishly to promote their business by writing good things about pharmaceuticals and bad things about alternative medicine. It has become a running joke in our household. My husband keeps asking me where Iâm hiding the money, and I keep …
You Can’t Pray the Gay Away
Tolerance for the full spectrum of human sexuality has made great strides. LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer) issues are frequently in the news. Same-sex marriage is now legal in all U.S. states and in numerous other countries around the world. But in seventy-two countries, homosexuality is a crime, and in thirteen countries, gay …
How Not to Do Science
According to research methodologist R. Barker Bausell, âCAM [complementary and alternative medicine]Â therapists simply do not value (and most, in my experience, do not understand) the scientific process.â They have seen their patients improve, and thatâs all the âevidenceâ they think they need. They donât understand that they may have been deceived by the post hoc …
Estaba equivocada (y apuesto a que tĂș tambiĂ©n)
Para mĂ, uno de los grandes placeres del escepticismo es descubrir que me equivoquĂ© en algo. MĂĄs que sentirme culpable por mi error, me siento orgullosa por haber aprendido algo y tener una mejor comprensiĂłn de la realidad. Cuando los escĂ©pticos encuentran una afirmaciĂłn cuestionable, hacen algo para chequear los hechos. Pero ÂżquĂ© pasa si …