I like to write down my thoughts here. In fact, recently I am finding that I am discomforted throughout my day if I have not written something in a while. That is probably why my last post was so antagonistic.
I am continually amazed to see hundreds of people reading what I write (yeah, I’m no PZ or Orac). While I get very few comments, Google lets me see how many visits I am getting and if they are sticking around to read something. So anyway, I wanted to thank you.
Another thing that makes me happy is to see some of the bigger bloggers writing on topics that I have written on. It certainly legitimizes many of the things I write about, and I am happy to see that people who are more familiar and more invested in a field than I am, write similar things as I have.
However, I have to admit, I understand many science topics, but am expert in few. My expertise lies in electronics, computer controls, and energy. The first two are hardly controversial, in fact there are many good engineers who can adeptly do the first two but are creationists and global warming deniers.
Anyway, I wrote a few posts about sCAM, over the last couple of months only to find that some of the big guys have written similar articles recently that are even better and more in depth. So I thought I would do a mini-carnival and bring them to you.
In February, I wrote about the fact that the CAM industry were putting real drugs into their so called “natural” medicines. Mark Crislip has recently done a fine Podcast that has included this information, but with more examples and specifics. Give it a listen. This same subject was covered a couple of days ago at Science Based Medicine.
Back in march I wrote about how the use of CAM is simply immoral from the perspective of the way they were getting raw materials from animals. Mark also covered that in the same podcast, and again with more examples and more specifics than I covered in my short post on it. While I was making comparisons to animal experimentation for evidence based medicine, Mark portrays it as an environmental issue, and he is right on. He has a blog post on it at SBM also.
In January, I discussed the fact that CAM practitioners love nothing better than to equivocate Homeopathy and Natural remedies or herbalism. I discussed what each of them are and how herbalism may have some evidence of efficacy for some things (but for the most part, we can synthesize the active agents), but the homeopathy provides nothing of the sort. OK, nothing recent from the big guys, and as I wrote back then:
This is not going to be a unique post about homeopathy or natural remedies, or equivocation... I am not the first to point out that homeopathy is bunk, I certainly won't be the last
Anyway, I hope you use my blog as a spring board for more in depth reading.
Be well!
Learn something new every day.
Do something meaningful every day.
