I was so busy mentioning how the Society of Homeopaths was using legal threats to try to shut down the free speech rights of the host of the next Skeptics' Circle, Le Canard Noir, that I forgot to mention that he also turned me on to a great web comic. The comic, Cectic, is highly unusual in that it is clearly a comic by a skeptic for skeptics. Some examples (click for a larger version):
Herbal cancer remedies:
Homeopathy:
Psychics:
Biblical "inerrancy":
"Intelligent design" creationism:
Astrology:
Cephalod abuse with alternative medicine (don't tell PZ):
And lots more. It's definitely worth bookmarking Cectic.
More like this
One of the biggest complaints from alternative medicine practitioners is that some vast cabal, presumably made up big pharma, the CDC, the NIH, the AMA, and "conventional" doctors, is "suppressing" alternative medicine. Yes, true believers like, say, Mike Adams will claim that big pharma is going…
Three months ago, I wrote about vacuous legal threats issued by the Society of Homeopaths against one of the better skeptical bloggers, Le Canard Noir, who runs the excellent Quackometer Blog and created the infamous Quackometer, in order to intimidate him into silence. The attempt backfired…
Don't forget, once again the time is fast approaching.
Soon yet another installment of the Skeptics' Circle will be upon us. In fact, it's less than a week away and due to land at the quackometer blog on Thursday, October 25. Our host this time has achieved a fair amount of notoriety by being the…
If there is one aspect of cranks that is almost universal (besides the aforementioned tendency to want to prove themselves through things like "live televised debates"), it's a tendency to want to shut down the criticism of its opposition. True, such a tendency is a human trait as well and used far…
In my opinion PZ would love the cephalopod. It defends itself from some stupid altie, so...
Thanks for posting these. The astrology one is priceless.
Here's a joke you may know:
Two good old friends were meeting. "How are you and your family?" asks the one. "Oh we're all fine". The other one answers, "We're all healthy and have work to earn our lives. But how 'bout your son?? Is he still workless??" "Not at all", the first one answers, "He's doing meditation now." "Meditation? What's this? What is he doing?" "I don't know exactly," the first one answers again, "But I'm sure it's better than just sitting down and doing nothing!"
Some of them seem to be attacking strawmen, like say this one on acupuncture:
http://cectic.com/007.html
This is awesome!
I laughed my head off with when I read the homeopathy one this weekend and I as I recovered I thought to myself "Orac has to see this!"
Then I check in this morning and what do I see?
Great stuff.
Some of them seem to be attacking strawmen, like say this one on acupuncture:
Yes, they seem to be attacking a strawman where acupuncture does something ;)
[Disclaimer: blah possible minor pain relief blah, foundations still utter crap]