Corrigendum. The Week in Review for 05/07/2017.

If your newsfeed is a buffet, the internet serves a suspicious amount of “miracle cure” casserole. Every so often, it’s useful to have someone walk down the
line with a clipboard and say, “Okaywhat’s actually real, what’s just expensive vibes, and what’s going to land somebody in the ER?”

That’s the spirit behind Corrigendum. The Week in Review for 05/07/2017.a sharp, skeptical roundup from the science-based medicine world that
stitches together a week’s worth of headlines about alternative medicine harms, questionable research designs, vaccine misinformation, and the occasional
legal bill that arrives with extra zeroes. It’s funny in that “laugh so you don’t scream” wayand it’s also an excellent snapshot of how pseudomedicine
spreads: not just through bad information, but through incentives, loopholes, and storytelling that feels better than facts.

What “Corrigendum” Means (and Why It’s the Perfect Name for This Kind of Roundup)

A corrigendum is a correctionusually published when something in print needs to be fixed. In science and medicine, corrections are not a
sign of weakness; they’re a sign the system is trying (sometimes loudly) to keep itself honest. So calling a weekly roundup “Corrigendum” is a wink and a
warning: the world is full of claims that need correcting, and the correction often arrives after the damage has already started.

The 05/07/2017 edition is built like a “greatest hits” album of what science-based clinicians and skeptics watch for: stories of harm, studies that seem
designed to produce a flattering conclusion, and the uncomfortable truth that people can cling to ineffective treatments even after evidence-based care
helps them.

The Week’s Unofficial Theme: When “Alternative” Turns Into “Avoidable”

One of the most important questions in any medical story is brutally simple: What’s the harm? Not “Could it help?” or “Does it feel
ancient and soothing?” but “What happens if someone believes this and acts on it?”

The week’s roundup puts harm front and centerespecially the harm that shows up when unqualified people impersonate health professionals, when vulnerable
communities are targeted with persuasive misinformation, or when treatments are promoted without meaningful evidence (or with evidence that’s carefully
arranged to look meaningful).

It’s also a reminder that the “harm” isn’t always dramatic or immediate. Sometimes it’s quieter: months or years of pain, delayed diagnosis, unnecessary
expense, and erosion of trust in real care. In the long run, those slow burns can be just as destructive as a headline-grabbing tragedy.

Vaccines and the Minnesota Measles Wake-Up Call

One of the most consequential threads in the 05/07/2017 review is vaccinationspecifically the measles outbreak in Minnesota that was accelerating in
spring 2017. Measles isn’t a “cute rash” illness. It’s one of the most contagious viruses we deal with, and outbreaks tend to find pockets of low
vaccination like water finds cracks.

Public reporting and public health documentation from that period describe how falling MMR vaccination coverage created vulnerabilityparticularly among
Minnesota’s Somali-American community, where fears about autism and misunderstandings about vaccines had been actively amplified for years. Once measles
arrived, the outbreak grew quickly, and the response required more than just data. It required culturally competent outreach, trusted messengers, and
relentless clarity that the vaccine-autism claim has been thoroughly studied and repeatedly rejected by evidence.

The big lesson from that week is still painfully current: misinformation doesn’t need to convince everyone. It only needs to concentrate in one community,
one network, one school, one neighborhoodthen an outbreak can do the rest. When vaccination rates drop, the “choice” stops being personal and becomes a
community risk, especially for infants and people who can’t be vaccinated for medical reasons.

What a measles outbreak teaches content readers (and content writers)

• Numbers matter: measles spreads fast enough that small drops in vaccination can have big consequences.
• Stories matter: outreach works better when it respects culture and addresses fear, not just when it “dunks” on misinformation.
• Visuals matter: good graphics can communicate what long explainers can’tespecially when attention is scarce.

Acupuncture, “Pragmatic Trials,” and the Trap of Subjective Endpoints

The roundup also takes aim at a familiar research pattern: studies that ask people how they feel after a treatment, but either skip objective measurements
or bury them so deeply they might as well be in witness protection.

The 05/07/2017 review highlights acupuncture research in asthma and the way “pragmatic trials” can be usedsometimes sincerely, sometimes convenientlyto
produce positive-sounding conclusions. A pragmatic trial, in theory, asks how an intervention works in real-world conditions. In practice, it can become a
loophole: compare “usual care” to “usual care plus a ritual that feels like care,” then act surprised when the ritual group reports better quality of life.

Here’s the core problem: in conditions like asthma, you don’t have to guess whether a treatment works. You can measure lung function. You can track rescue
inhaler use. You can measure peak flow or FEV1. If a study focuses on “participants felt improved” while objective measures are missing or unchanged,
skepticism is not cynicismit’s basic quality control.

The placebo lesson from asthma that keeps showing up everywhere

A particularly memorable point from the broader research conversation is that placebos can produce real changes in reported symptomsespecially when an
intervention feels active, personalized, or high-effort. In asthma studies, patients may report feeling better after sham procedures or placebo inhalers,
even while objective lung function doesn’t budge. That gapbetween “I feel better” and “my body is measurably functioning better”is where a lot of
pseudomedicine tries to set up shop.

None of this means subjective experience is irrelevant. It means you should treat it as one piece of the puzzle, not the whole puzzleparticularly when
the condition can be measured objectively and the stakes include hospitalization or worse.

Animal Acupuncture and the “Caregiver Placebo” Problem

One of the more surreal items from that week’s news ecosystem involves veterinary electro-acupuncture for an injured tortoise. If you’re thinking, “A
tortoise can’t even fill out a pain scale,” you’re already touching the key issue: with animals, the placebo effect often shifts to the humans.

Caregivers can interpret normal healing as proof the intervention worked, especially when the intervention is memorable and the story is irresistible.
Meanwhile, the animal is also receiving supportive carerehabilitation, nutrition, safety, timewhich are the actual heavy lifters of recovery.

The reason this matters isn’t to mock anyone trying to help an animal. It’s to highlight how easy it is to confuse a compelling narrative (“needles and
electricity saved the tortoise!”) with a demonstrated mechanism (“the tortoise improved because the acupuncture specifically caused recovery beyond
supportive care”). Those are not the same thing.

Chiropractic and the Million-Dollar Reality Check

If you want a fast way to locate medical nonsense, follow the money. The 05/07/2017 roundup points to a case where a chiropractor agreed to pay more than
$1 million to resolve allegations involving billing practices and medically unnecessary procedures tied to treating peripheral neuropathy.

This is where “alternative medicine” stops being quirky and starts being a policy problem. Medicare fraud and improper billing aren’t victimless. They can
steer patients toward unnecessary interventions, drain public resources, and normalize a standard of care that isn’t anchored in evidence.

It also speaks to why “it’s licensed” is not the same as “it’s effective.” Licensing can mean “the state created a category for this.” It does not
automatically mean the underlying claims have been validated to the standards we expect for drugs, surgeries, or mainstream clinical practice.

“Slap Therapy,” Legal Accountability, and the Cost of Magical Thinking

The week’s roundup references the broader universe of extreme alternative “healing” practicesspecifically “paida lajin” / “slap therapy,” which has been
associated with tragic outcomes when people are encouraged to treat serious disease with rituals instead of medicine.

Reporting around that era described legal action connected to the death of a child with diabetes after a self-healing conference, and later coverage would
continue to follow cases involving the same “slap therapy” promoter. The throughline is chillingly consistent: when a practice frames worsening symptoms
as “detox” or “healing crisis,” it can delay emergency help until it’s too late.

Diabetes is a particularly stark example because the consequences of stopping insulin can be swift and severe. Any health influencer, practitioner, or
“guru” suggesting that a person with type 1 diabetes can replace insulin with alternative methods is not offering an “option.” They are handing out danger
wrapped in optimism.

Why This 2017 Week-in-Review Still Matters Today

You don’t have to live in 2017 to recognize the pattern. The platforms change, the buzzwords rotate (“detox,” “root cause,” “frequency,” “energy,” “biohack
your mitochondria”), but the structure stays familiar:

1. Anecdote beats data in the attention economy.
2. Subjective improvement gets marketed as proof.
3. Incentives (billing, reimbursement, influencer revenue) quietly shape what gets promoted.
4. Regulatory gaps let weak claims survive far longer than they should.
5. Corrections arrive late and spread slowly.

“Corrigendum” works as a metaphor because it describes the modern information problem: the correction is always playing catch-up.

A quick “skeptic’s checklist” you can use on the next miracle headline

• What is being measured? Feelings, function, lab values, hospitalizations, survival?
• Compared to what? No treatment, placebo, sham procedure, standard of care?
• Who benefits if it’s true? Patients, advertisers, clinics, insurers, influencers?
• What’s the downside? Side effects, delay of real care, cost, false reassurance?
• Can the claim survive replication? One positive study is not a victory parade.

How to Read a “Week in Review” Without Getting Fooled (or Exhausted)

A weekly review is not just entertainment; it’s a training tool. Read it like a detective, not like a consumer shopping for hope:

1) Separate “interesting” from “true”

A tortoise getting electro-acupuncture is interesting. The question “Did it work beyond supportive care?” is truth-seeking.

2) Treat reimbursement as a plot twist

When the rationale for a study includes “this affects whether insurance will pay,” your skepticism should immediately stretch like it’s warming up for leg
day.

3) Look for objective anchors

Some conditions require subjective measures (pain is real and personal). But when objective outcomes are available and omitted, that omission is part of
the story.

4) Track corrections as a feature, not a failure

In science-based medicine, corrections are normal. In pseudomedicine, the claim often never gets correctedonly rebranded.

Experiences Related to “Corrigendum. The Week in Review for 05/07/2017.” (A 500-Word Add-On)

Reading a week-in-review like this can feel oddly familiar because the situations it highlights show up in everyday lifeat family dinners, in group chats,
on community Facebook pages, and sometimes in exam rooms. One common experience is the “two timelines” problem: someone is living in the timeline where
evidence-based care is boring but effective, while another person is living in the timeline where a dramatic alternative story feels more meaningful.

For example, a person with chronic joint pain might spend months experimenting with “anti-inflammatory” supplements recommended by a charismatic wellness
account. The supplements aren’t necessarily the villain; the villain is the delay. In that time, their mobility shrinks, sleep worsens, and everyday tasks
become negotiations. Eventually, they try the evidence-based treatment they were offered earliermaybe a DMARD for rheumatoid arthritis, physical therapy,
or a targeted medicationand they improve. The emotional whiplash is real: relief that something worked, frustration about the lost time, and sometimes
embarrassment that they were pulled in by confident claims that didn’t deliver. Yet they may still keep a few alternative habits, because letting go can
feel like admitting you were “fooled,” and nobody enjoys that.

Clinicians often describe a related experience: the visit that starts with, “I’m not anti-medicine, but…” It can be a patient asking whether acupuncture
can replace inhalers for asthma, or a family member insisting vaccines are “too many, too soon.” The practical challenge is that you can’t just present a
stack of studies and expect trust to magically appear. Trust is built through conversationlistening to what the person fears, identifying what they’ve
heard, and then calmly connecting the dots: what measles does, why herd immunity matters, what side effects are real, and what the actual evidence says.
On the hardest days, it can feel like you’re competing with an algorithm that has unlimited time and a better meme budget.

Public health workers and community leaders describe another experience: the “targeted misinformation” problem. When anti-vaccine messaging focuses on a
specific communityespecially one that already feels misunderstoodit can spread faster than official corrections. People aren’t just deciding about a
shot; they’re deciding whether the system respects them. That’s why outbreak responses often shift from pure fact-sharing to relationship-building:
partnering with local leaders, using community languages, showing up consistently, and acknowledging historical reasons for mistrust while still being
clear about the medical reality.

And then there’s the reader’s experience: you scroll past a headline about “slap therapy,” laugh because it sounds impossible, and then stop laughing when
you realize people actually died. That momentwhen “weird” becomes “dangerous”is the exact moment a corrigendum is meant for. It’s not just correcting a
claim. It’s correcting the instinct to underestimate how persuasive misinformation can be when it offers certainty, belonging, and hope.

The most useful personal takeaway from a week-in-review like 05/07/2017 is not cynicism. It’s a habit: pause, ask what’s being measured, ask who benefits,
and ask what happens if the claim is wrong. In health, being wrong isn’t just awkward. Sometimes it’s expensive. Sometimes it’s tragic. And sometimes the
only thing standing between “interesting story” and “avoidable harm” is a well-timed correction.