ScienceBasedMedicine.org

What is it about

• Science-Based Medicine is dedicated to evaluating medical treatments and products of interest to the public in a scientific light, and promoting the highest standards and traditions of science in health care. Online information about alternative medicine is overwhelmingly credulous and uncritical, and even mainstream media and some medical schools have bought into the hype and failed to ask the hard questions.

Contributors

Steven Novella, MD David H. Gorski MD, PhD

Harriet Hall, MD

Kimball Atwood IV, MD

Contributors

Jann J. Bellamy Scott Gavura, BScPhm, MBA, RPh

Mark Crislip, MD

Steven P. Novella, MD

• The founder of the site and executive editor for the website.

• Practices neurology at Yale University School of Medicine.

• He writes an article about once a week for the website and will occasionally respond to comments.

• His style is in the 1st person, with a formal tone.

• In addition he hosts a weekly podcast called “The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe” and publishes his own individual website neurologicablog both cover a broader range of topics than for sciencebasedmedicine.org.

Harriet Hall, MD

• A retired Air Force flight surgeon, at time of retirement she held the rank of colonel.

• Her area of work was as a family practice specialist.

• Her profile on sciencebasedmedicine.org lists that she performed activities that ranged from delivering babies and flying a B-52 bomber.

• Her postings are in 1st person with a semi-formal tone and are done about once a week.

David Gorski, MD, PhD

• Surgical Oncologist specializing in the surgical treatment of breast cancer.

• He also does research centered around the creation of blood vessels in cancerous states and role of glutamate receptors in breast cancer.

• He has been blogging for 8 and a half years

• 1st person, mixes informal with formal. Likes to use humor in his postings.

• Posts under the name Orac at scienceblogs.com

• Mainly writes posts dealing with cancer and autism.

Audience

• The language used in the blogs for the most part is very accessible. Some technical terms are used.

• Very logo centric, if there are pictures its usually figures and graphs from studies they are analyzing.

• Quality information on current issues in medicine.

Major Issues

• The website covers a wide range of issues that receive attention in a public setting.

• -Autism, cancer, diet, vaccinations, media coverage of health issues and the inclusion of “Complementary and Alternative Medicine” (CAM) in medical schools and physician practices.

• One of their on going series of posts is on the claims of a link between autism and vaccinations, which they along with the vast majority of the scientific community consider nonexistent, but keeps getting coverage in news outlets.

• Another very heavily covered issue is the inclusion of what they consider disproven practices under the title of CAM.

Why read this blog?

• In our modern age of google it can be hard to find credible and accessible sources of information especially in the area of medicine.

• This website tries to include a solid analysis of current issues in medicine that often get the 30 second treatment on nightly news or a less rigorously written blog posting which leaves viewers with a less then idle picture of what is going on in medicine.