Beerina
Sarcastic Conqueror of Notions
- Joined
- Mar 3, 2004
- Messages
- 33,731
Well, Dr. Dean Edell wrapped up his 30+ year career doing skeptical medicine. Such a shame, too. I listened to his shows via podcast, and he was an incredibly refreshing breeze countering every manner of fad, fraud, and quackery.
He regularly quoted from big studies in response to innumerate questions from people wanting to know if this or that thing "really worked". He'd also talk about the latest news stories from medicine, frequently tempering it with, "It looks good but I'd like to see more studies."
Apparently he got his start in the vitamin industry, with his dad basically spawning it via manufacturing, and he was also in other alternative medicine early on. Somehow he saw the light of the double-blind, placebo-control studies.
Perhaps his favorite modern rant speaks of the ever-increasing number of studies showing vitamins are not only largely worthless (aside from chronic deficiencies) to the general population, but in some cases are actually harmful in increasing some kinds of cancer or other problems. Multivitamins or individual letter vitamins, he was also very observant of the faddishness of particular vitamins. We went through "the 'Vitamin C' decade" then the "Vitamin E decade", now we're in the middle of the "Vitamin D decade", with books and stores pushing that one. The earlier ones petered out with little science to support it, and he doesn't have high hopes for D.
And if it wasn't vitamins, it was the anti-vaccine crowd. He was all over the problems with the original study, and trumpeted each new revelation. It's too bad this final blow directly accusing the guy of fraud didn't come out a few weeks ago, I'd've loved to've heard him talk about it.
Enjoy your retirement, but you will be sorely missed.
He regularly quoted from big studies in response to innumerate questions from people wanting to know if this or that thing "really worked". He'd also talk about the latest news stories from medicine, frequently tempering it with, "It looks good but I'd like to see more studies."
Apparently he got his start in the vitamin industry, with his dad basically spawning it via manufacturing, and he was also in other alternative medicine early on. Somehow he saw the light of the double-blind, placebo-control studies.
Perhaps his favorite modern rant speaks of the ever-increasing number of studies showing vitamins are not only largely worthless (aside from chronic deficiencies) to the general population, but in some cases are actually harmful in increasing some kinds of cancer or other problems. Multivitamins or individual letter vitamins, he was also very observant of the faddishness of particular vitamins. We went through "the 'Vitamin C' decade" then the "Vitamin E decade", now we're in the middle of the "Vitamin D decade", with books and stores pushing that one. The earlier ones petered out with little science to support it, and he doesn't have high hopes for D.
And if it wasn't vitamins, it was the anti-vaccine crowd. He was all over the problems with the original study, and trumpeted each new revelation. It's too bad this final blow directly accusing the guy of fraud didn't come out a few weeks ago, I'd've loved to've heard him talk about it.
Enjoy your retirement, but you will be sorely missed.
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