Mar 06 2009

Science-Based Medicine Conference

Published by Steven Novella under Uncategorized
Comments: 7

My colleagues and I will be holding a Science-Based Medicine conference on Thursday, July 9th. This is an all-day conference covering topics of science and medicine. The conference is designed for both a professional and general audience.

The conference will be at the Southpoint Casino and Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. It is also part of The Amazing Meeting 7 (TAM7) which is run by the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF). You can register for the conference either separately or packaged with TAM7.  You can register for both here.

Physicians can earn 6 hours of category 1 CME credits for attending the conference.

Below is the list of speakers and the titles of their talks, and below that is the bio for each speaker.

Topics:
Introduction to Science-Based Medicine (Steven Novella, MD)
Case studies in cancer quackery: Testimonials, anecdotes, and pseudoscience (David H. Gorski, MD. PhD)
A Scientific Critique of Chiropractic (Harriet Hall, MD)
Why Evidence-Based Medicine is not yet Science-Based Medicine (Kimball Atwood, MD)
Lyme: From the IDSA to the ILAD to the ABA (Mark Crislip, MD)
Online Health & Social Media: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (Val Jones, MD)
Conclusion (Steven Novella, MD)

Speakers:

Steven Novella, MD
Dr. Novella is an academic clinical neurologist at Yale University School of Medicine. He is the president and co-founder of the New England Skeptical Society. He is also the host and producer of the popular weekly science podcast, The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe. He authors NeuroLogicaBlog and contributes to several other science blogs: The Rogues Gallery, SkepticBlog, and Science-Based Medicine, of which he is also the founding editor.

David H. Gorski, MD, PhD
Dr. Gorski is an Associate Professor of Surgery Division of Surgical Oncology, Wayne State University School of Medicine, Detroit, MI. He is also the Program Leader, Breast Cancer Biology Program, Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute. His cancer research has been funded by the NIH, ASCO, and the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. He is a long-time science blogger who regularly tackles issues related to science and medicine. He is the associated editor of Science-Based Medicine.

Harriet Hall, MD
Dr. Hall is a retired family physician. She spent 20 years in the Air Force as a flight surgeon and family physician and retired as a full colonel. Also known as “The SkepDoc” from her column in Skeptic magazine, she has written extensively about alternative medicine. She is an editor of The Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine and the Science-Based Medicine blog, is an advisor to Quackwatch, and is a contributing editor to both Skeptic and Skeptical Inquirer magazines. Her website is www.skepdoc.info.

Kimball Atwood, MD
Dr. Atwood is a practicing anesthesiologist who is also board-certified in internal medicine. He has been interested in pseudoscience for years. He was a member of the Massachusetts Special Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medical Practitioners, and subsequently wrote its Minority Report opposing licensure for naturopaths. He is an associate editor of the Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine and co-editor of Naturowatch. He is particularly concerned with implausible claims being promoted, tacitly or otherwise, by medical schools and government. He is also dubious about the ethics of human trials of such claims.

Mark Crislip, MD
Dr. Crislip has been a practicing Infectious Disease specialist in Portland, Oregon since 1990. He is Chief of Infectious Diseases for Legacy Health System.
He is responsible for the Quackcast, a skeptical review of Supplements, Complementary and Alternative Medicine, The Persilflagers Annotated Compendium of Infectious Disease Facts, Dogma and Opinion a guide to Infectious Diseases, the Persifalgers Puscast, a podcast review of Infectious Diseases, and Rubor, Dolor, Calor, Tumor, an infectious disease blog.

Val Jones, MD
Dr. Jones is the CEO of Better Health, LLC, a medical blogging network, and VP of Strategic Partnerships at MedPage Today, an online health news source for healthcare professionals. She has been the Senior Medical Director for Revolution Health, and the founding editor of Clinical Nutrition & Obesity, a peer-reviewed e-section of the online Medscape medical journal. Dr. Jones volunteers once a week as a rehabilitation medicine physician at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

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7 responses so far

7 Responses to “Science-Based Medicine Conference”

  1. caoimhon 06 Mar 2009 at 12:42 pm

    That’s an awesome line up.

    Fancy flying to Europe for a second date?
    Or better yet, take it on the road for a world tour!

    Having been a reader of SBM blog for a while now, I would strongly recommend attendance to my fellow sceptics.

  2. Mendelationon 06 Mar 2009 at 1:10 pm

    Currently sending in my registration for the conference and TAM7 as well. Thanks to this conference, my school is picking up the tab for both. Yoohoo! Looking forward to my first TAM and hearing these excellent speakers.

  3. Steven Novellaon 06 Mar 2009 at 3:11 pm

    caoimh – we would love to take the conference on the road. This first conference is kind of a test for us. If it is successful it will help future conferences.

    Further, if you can find a sponsor to provide funding for an SBM conference we would happily go pretty-much anywhere. Ballpark for such a conference is $10-15 thousand to cover CME processing, location, and travel. Obviously location will alter this figure significantly.

  4. Paul Mardenon 07 Mar 2009 at 8:03 pm

    Will there be any online access to the materials of these presentations after the end of the conference?

  5. DevilsAdvocateon 08 Mar 2009 at 3:29 pm

    Off topic, my apologies, but I wanted to post how the major newspaper in my home state of North Carolina printed an editorial lambasting those who refused to afford intelligent design equal time with evolution in the NC public school system. The editorial was pretty much what you’d expect, with all the usual fallacies, strawmen, and special pleading. What wa sremarkable and prompts me to post is the reaction – people went nuts, overwhelming the newspaper with follow-up letters and online comments ripping the editorial to shreds, with angry calls for keeping ‘religious nuts’ out of our school system. Given we are in the Bible Belt and that NC is strongly Southern Baptist, this really surprised me. Usually it’s dozens of ID supportive letters with one or two pro-evolution letters from an NC State prof or Research Triangle Park scientist. Not this time -total rout in favor of evolution.

    For those of you fighting the good fight, take heart – evidence of solid gain is at hand. Raleigh NC has fallen to the Evolution Army – onward to burn Atlanta!

  6. neilsteron 09 Mar 2009 at 6:04 pm

    Conference attendee attire suggestion:

    http://www.typetees.com/product/1727/Actually_medicine_is_the_best_medicine

  7. Sastraon 09 Mar 2009 at 6:41 pm

    I’m already signed up for TAM, and registered for the Science-Based Medicine conference. I hadn’t realized so many of you would be there!

    Looking forward to it…