Doctor Skeptic

Always hard reviewing your own book, so I have pasted comments from others below. The book expands on previous themes in my first book: Surg...

Once inserted, heart pacemakers can be turned off and on remotely. This makes them well suited for a placebo study, and that’s what thes...

Addit: Two placebo studies using spinal cord stimulation (SCS) were brought to my attention by an attendee at a neuromodulation conferen...

Spinal cord stimulators are small battery-powered devices that are implanted in the back and electrically stimulate the spinal cord to r...

The golden rule of surgery is: Primum non nocere - ‘First, do no harm’. There is another, competing rule that comes from practicing defen...

So much emphasis is placed on the consent form; we are lectured about it’s importance from our first days as an intern. Like no other fo...

I have always been sceptical of some shoulder procedures, and the increasing rate of shoulder surgery and the lack of high quality evidenc...

Corticosteroid injections in the knee are VERY commonly performed for any knee pain, but particularly for osteoarthritis. They don’t provi...

A recent paper in the Medical Journal of Australia ( here ) provides a nice overview of the biases that lead doctors to overtreat and over...

This story is a good example that goes along with a previous post about treating (and correcting) surrogate factors (like X-rays and blood...

“Researchers don’t know what it’s like to deal with patients”. Research is meaningless to me – I know what works”. “Most research is rubbi...

A state politician just defected to another party because that party agreed to support his stance on medical marijuana (cannabis). The pol...

Vitamins are vital amines, needed for everyday chemical reactions in our bodies. Deficiencies can be harmful, but that doesn’t mean that t...

“Tennis elbow”, also known as lateral epicondylitis, is a common condition causing pain over the outside of the elbow, where the muscles t...

A common ending to a consultation where I have explained to a patient that there is nothing that surgery/medicine can reliably or safely o...

I have 4 kids , 3 of whom had their wisdom teeth removed on reaching adulthood on the advice of specialists . I had mine removed in my ...

Many people I know drink water constantly – they are always taking a swig out of a water bottle that never leaves their side. After having...

Another large international trial is published, and another standard practice based on little more than our bias towards doing something r...

This will be a test of how unbiased I am. Writing a review of my own book (regardless of any bias) seems like shameless self-promotion, bu...

I have previously written about the (non) role of arthroscopy for osteoarthritis or degenerative meniscus tears in the knee ( here , here ...