Science-Based Medicine

Science-Based Medicine focuses on critically assessing medical treatments and products that interest the public through a scientific lens. Our goal is to uphold the highest scientific standards within healthcare. Much of the information available online regarding alternative medicine tends to be overly trusting and lacks scrutiny. Even mainstream media and certain medical schools sometimes fall for the hype, neglecting to ask essential questions. We aim to provide a necessary "alternative" viewpoint: a scientific viewpoint. Reliable science is the most effective means to identify which treatments and products are genuinely safe and effective. This concept is part of a movement known as evidence-based medicine (EBM). While EBM positively influences medical practice, it does have its drawbacks, such as placing too much emphasis on evidence from clinical trials alone. This can lead to issues, like wasting taxpayer money on further research that may not be beneficial. Science-Based Medicine seeks not to compete with EBM but to complement it by advocating for a broader perspective: to truly understand "what works," we must prioritize our comprehensive scientific knowledge from all relevant fields. The contributors to SBM are all trained in medicine and have dedicated years to writing about science and healthcare for the public, passionately promoting high scientific standards in the medical field.

Trade/B2B

English

Online/Digital

Outlet metrics

Domain Authority

Ranking

Global

#237520

United States

#66558

Health/Health

#1447

Traffic sources

Monthly visitors

Articles

The MAHA Report: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (mostly the bad and ugly)

1 week ago | sciencebasedmedicine.org | David Gorski

Given that this is a holiday weekend, I had been considering taking a week off to hang out, go on long bike rides, and do some yard work. Then—wouldn’t you know it?—on Thursday, the Trump administration and his “make America healthy again” (MAHA) antivax crank and toady, Robert F.
Personalized CRISPR Gene Editing Therapy

2 weeks ago | sciencebasedmedicine.org | Steven Novella

While the medical world is melting down from the absolute apocalypse that is RFK Jr., it’s good to celebrate that (at least for now) medical progress continues to march on. Recently published in the NEJM is a case report of a breakthrough that we may look back on as a milestone in medicine. Patient-Specific In Vivo Gene Editing to Treat a Rare Genetic Disease. This represents the culmination of one of the promises of the CRISPR revolution – specific gene therapy in living individuals.
Attacking vaccines through the misunderstanding of medical ethics

2 weeks ago | sciencebasedmedicine.org | David Gorski

Ever since antivax activist turned presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. bent the knee to Donald Trump in exchange for a high-ranking position related to health in the Trump administration under the false banner of “make America healthy again” (MAHA), I’ve been warning what a threat he is to the federal government’s public health and science programs, warnings that, in retrospect, turned out to have been, if anything, not dire enough.
Brainspotting is Classic Pseudoscience

3 weeks ago | sciencebasedmedicine.org | Steven Novella

Have you heard of brainspotting? It’s been around since 2003 when it was invented out of whole cloth (not “discovered”) by psychotherapist David Grand. It seems to be gaining in popularity recently, so it is worth the SBM treatment. Here is how proponents describe the alleged phenomenon:“Brainspotting makes use of this natural phenomenon through its use of relevant eye positions.
Lysenkoism 2.0 and the dismantling of the NIH

3 weeks ago | sciencebasedmedicine.org | David Gorski

There’s an old adage or curse that comes to mind nearly every day since Donald Trump won the 2024 Presidential election. Hard as it is to believe, it’s been less than four months since Trump was inaugurated, and nearly every day since then has greeted me with new assaults on the federal infrastructure overseeing biomedical science, medicine, and public health. It’s an assault that began before longtime antivax activist Robert F.
Pig Heart Xenografts for Infants

1 month ago | sciencebasedmedicine.org | Steven Novella

Organ transplant is a potentially lifesaving medical intervention, but there is a critical lack of donor organs. Even in a wealthy country like the US, there are about 100,000 people on the waiting list for an organ transplant, but only about 23 thousand organs become available each year. About 6 thousand people die each year while on the waiting list. For this reason researchers are looking for alternatives.
HHS is weaponizing evidence-based medicine to falsely portray vaccines as unsafe

1 month ago | sciencebasedmedicine.org | David Gorski

Having a man who has for the last two decades arguably been America’s most famous and intellectual antivax activist in charge of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has been exhausting. Every week, I say that I’m not going to write about whatever new horror Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is inflicting on US federal health, public health, and biomedical research, but then every week he comes up with something new that, to those of us paying attention, is not really new at all.
Trust Me-I’m a Doctor

1 month ago | sciencebasedmedicine.org | Steven Novella

Trust is a fragile yet critical resource for any institution. At the end of the day, civilization is mostly built on a handshake and a mutual agreement to follow the rules. This includes trust that designated experts have the expertise they claim, are competent, and are acting appropriately in the interest of others, rather than exploiting their position for self-dealing. A critical loss of trust leads to the collapse of institutions and even nations.
Hello measles, my old friend: The return of previously vanquished vaccine-preventable diseases

1 month ago | sciencebasedmedicine.org | David Gorski

When a country puts an antivaxxer and supporter of quackery whose worldview with respect to medicine and biomedical science is as utterly divorced from science and reality as that of longtime antivax activist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. in charge of the nation’s medicine and public health, there are certain predictable outcomes that we can expect to observe over the next few years. The most obvious of these outcomes is the likely return of once-vanquished vaccine-preventable diseases.
Self-Treating with Serious Drugs on the Rise

1 month ago | sciencebasedmedicine.org | Steven Novella

One of the greatest innovations benefiting public health was regulation. In the pre-FDA “patent medicine” days, there were countless products on the market that ranged from useless to directly harmful. This was a time when you could sell radioactive tonics, cocaine-laced elixirs, and products containing poisons, like turpentine. The sellers of these products made many unsupported claims and preyed disproportionately on the poor.