Science-based Medicine Feed

An excellent article on the BBC gives a good overview of the continuing controversy over universal lockdowns as a pandemic mitigation strategy during COVID. We now have significant data about how various countries around the world fared compared to their mitigation strategy. Interestingly, this data is unlikely to resolve the controversy. But it can inform our decisions for the next pandemic – […]

"RFK Jr. switching sides on vaccines now is like an arsonist urging people to put out the fire he started."

Measles is back, and so are all the old antivax tropes about the disease and the vaccine. Unfortunately, there's an antivaxxer in charge.

The many doctors who are just now realizing that misinformation wasn't "COVID hysteria nonsense" have a lot of catching up to do to understand how the forces they've legitimized the led to this moment.

I’m taking a few weeks away from the blog. So today, an open thread with a request for suggestions on topics that you feel have been unexplored by the blog. Let me (and the other contributors) know the questions you have and what subjects you want to see addressed. Or use this to comment on anything else, SBM-related. The floor is yours. […]

What, exactly, is dyslexia? What causes it, how should it be diagnosed, and stemming from that, how should it be treated? We can even ask a more fundamental question – does it actually exist as a discrete clinical entity? These questions have existed since dyslexia was first described and named in 1887, by German Opthalmologist, Rudolf Berlin. Not surprisingly, he thought the […]

The chaos and cruelty of its abrupt deconstruction are self-evident and already demonstrable

When Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was nominated to be Secretary of Health & Human Services, I called him an "extinction-level threat" to public health. Here's how he will attempt to make vaccines extinct in the US.

Policy-based evidence making means working back from a predefined policy to produce underpinning evidence.

There is no doubt the "studies" in this journal will conclude We Want Them Infected doctors were right about everything the whole time; mitigation measure were an epic catastrophe while COVID was a harmless cold for everyone but grandma.

I just watched the new Netflix series, Apple Cider Vinegar, which tells the story of Belle Gibson, an Australian woman who launched a wellness business based largely on the false claim that she had survived “terminal brain cancer”. It is worth a watch, and overall I feel the writers (this is a fictionalized version, not a documentary) captured the industry of fake […]

Pondering the future of a few infections. As to the image, consider it a metaphor of before and after where Jesus is a stand in for science or public health or whatever you want him to be. Except a promoter of peace and helping the poor. Not in 2025 anyway. See https://www.bu.edu/sequitur/2016/04/29/handler-ecce/ for more.

The nightmare has come true. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been confirmed as HHS Secretary and didn't wait long to start dismantling federal science and health programs. The White House even formed a "MAHA commission" to draw up a battle plan.

Although many doctors who spread COVID misinformation act as if its in poor taste to bring it up today, we don't need their permission to remember.

$160 million is a lot of money, especially when you consider its not just money. It's lost dreams, careers, and discoveries.

Electrolyte drinks are very popular - but are they necessary?

It’s always good (and frustratingly rare) to see the mainstream media get it right when it comes to pseudoscience in medicine. Too often the narrative is – scientists are baffled at this alternative “one easy trick” to improve your health. Most mainstream articles on pseudoscience in medicine frame their reporting around a positive anecdote, and at best throw in some token skepticism […]

When used responsibly botulinum toxin is very safe, but patients should be especially vigilant about cosmetic treatments done outside a medical setting.

Friday, the Trump administration slashed indirect costs associated with NIH grants. What does this mean, and why could it be so disastrous for biomedical research?