Newsweek

There's a good rule of thumb about headlines (other than Betteridge's Law of Headlines) that I use when perusing articles. It's particularly useful for evaluating headlines about medical and science stories. Basically, if a headline says something like, "everything you know about X is/might be/could be wrong" or "everything scientists know about X is/might be/could be wrong," it's a highly reliable indication that much of what is in the article that follows is very likely to be unmitigated, grade-A bullshit. I realize that it might be confirmation bias on my part (I am, after all, a skeptic…

If there's' one theme, one cause, that this blog has emphasized throughout the four years of its existence and the three years of its having resided on ScienceBlogs, it's been to champion science- and evidence-based medicine over pseudoscience and quackery. Whether it's refuting the lies of antivaccine zealots, having a little fun with some of the more outrageously bizarre forms of pseudoscience, railing against cancer quackery, lamenting how easily pseudoscientific quackery has infiltrated medical academia, complaining about drug companies rigging clinical studies, or trying to educate my…