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skepdoc.info
Personal blog · skepdoc.infohealthscience
skepdoc.info is a personal blog at skepdoc.info about health and science. Since 2019, 5 different Hacker News readers have linked it 5 times, most often “Surgery, the Ultimate Placebo”. The last post was in 2023, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (3) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Commenters link posts on medical evidence, such as stem cell clinics that lack evidence and surgery that lacks placebo controls. The comments cite these posts without judging the writing.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 3 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
This official website is dedicated to the work of Dr. Hall who will always be remembered for her tireless efforts promoting science-based medicine.
Most-linked posts?
- Surgery, the Ultimate Placebo2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-12-18
What Hacker News says?
Ever wonder why a miracle doctor from America has to work in Panama? Yeah, it's because he spends a lot of time doing things that don't have much (any) evidence to back them up. https://www.skepdoc.info/beware-stem-cell-clinics-that-offer...
Comment linking /beware-stem-cell-clinics-that-offer-untested-treatments/
on “Woman appears cured of HIV after umbilical-cord blood transplant”Submitted Surgery, the Ultimate Placebo as a story · 261 points
HN discussionSo the old thought about cancer was "every cancer will grow and kill the patient so we always want to find the cancer early and treat it before it spreads" Turns out that's not accurate, and its complicated, and we are still learning. There's three types of cancer, birds, turtles, and rabbits. (I didn't make up this terminology, see links) The birds have already flown away and left the barnyard, early detection isn'…
Comment linking /a-skeptical-look-at-screening-tests-2/
on “Why Some Doctors Hesitate to Screen Smokers for Lung Cancer (2015)”Submitted Surgery, the Ultimate Placebo (2020) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI’m reminded of this article. There are very rarely placebo surgeries done, so it is an entire arm of medicine that is running wild without proper controls being done. https://www.skepdoc.info/ian-harris-on-surgery-the-ultimate-... If you’ve had a lobotomy surgery, you have a huge tendency to believe it maybe did something positive. An interesting study would have been just tell people that they had a lobotomy. If I…
Comment linking /ian-harris-on-surgery-the-ultimate-placebo/m
on “My Lobotomy: Howard Dully's Journey (2005)”