Science-Based Medicine

Science-Based Medicine (or SBM) is a group blog about medicine written from a skeptical viewpoint. As a result, a lot of its content deals with alternative medicine claims.

SBM was founded by Steven Novella, MD. It is owned by the (the NESS); Novella is also the NESS's current president as well as one co-founder. In 2020, the blog became part of the Center for Inquiry (CFI) — Quackwatch also joined the CFI that year.

Contributors
The editorial staff for SBM writes regularly and includes:


 * Steven Novella, MD
 * David Gorski, MD, PhD
 * MD
 * MD
 * Harriet Hall, MD

Other contributors for SBM include:


 * Joseph Albietz, MD
 * Val Jones, MD
 * Peter A. Lipson, MD
 * Scott Gavura, BScPhm, MBA, RPh
 * Jann Bellamy, JD
 * Brennen McKenzie, MA, VMD
 * John M. Snyder, MD
 * Clay Jones, MD
 * James Coyne, PhD
 * Ben Kavoussi, MS, PA-C
 * Linda Rosa, RN
 * Lorne Trottier, CM
 * David Weinberg, MD
 * Steve Hendry, BSc DDS FAGD
 * Sam Homola, DC
 * Igor Bussel, BS, MS
 * Jim Dougherty, MD, MPH, Brig Gen USAF (ret)
 * Olle Kjellin, MD, PhD
 * Andrey Pavlov, MD student
 * Grant Ritchey, DDS
 * David W. Ramey, DVM
 * David J. Kroll, PhD
 * Timothy Kreider
 * Martin Lessem, JD
 * Eugenie Mielczarek, BS, MS, PhD

Subjects
Being a skeptical medical blog, SBM naturally covers relevant subjects of interest that are also part of our purview here at the wiki:
 * GreenMedInfo
 * NaturalNews

Retracted article by Harriet Hall
Harriet Hall was a regular contributor to Science-Based Medicine who normally wrote high-quality content. Some of her later contributions, however, flirted with transphobic viewpoints. Her first few articles on the subject advocated excessive caution about gender transitioning, which was decried by some readers as transphobic. Her first misstep into the shitstorm was her review of Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters, by Abigail Shrier (who was featured in a PragerU video) that was largely uncritical despite the obvious fearmongering from the book's cover and even the title. Hall additionally cited very few sources to back her claims, and it's unclear where she's just describing the book's arguments or if she's endorsing the arguments. The comments in the article were largely critical and highlighted basic inaccuracies (such as the claim that in California it is very easy to get top surgery).

This led to two other SBM editors, David Gorski and Steve Novella, to pull the article and leave a note: "After careful review, the editors of SBM decided to retract this book review. Because we allow trusted authors to publish without prior review for the sake of efficiency and timeliness, occasionally corrections need to be made post-publication. In this case we felt there were too many issues with the treatment of the relevant science, and leaving the article up would not be appropriate given the standards of SBM." The note then says it's not an act of censorship and people can try to respectfully discuss in the comments section, but that didn't stop Michael Shermer from republishing the article in Skeptic.com who initially left a note saying that SBM has a "far-left progressive political bias that has compromised their otherwise stellar reputation as a trustworthy source", though it was later removed from Skeptic's repost.