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From Quackwatch:FDA Orders Dr. Joseph Mercola to Stop Illegal Claims

Find out more about the man behind the funding for the California Proposition 37 labeling initiative. "Many of Mercola's articles make unsubstantiated claims and clash with those of leading medical and public health organizations. For example, he opposes immunization [4] and fluoridation [5], and mammography [6]; claims that amalgam fillings are toxic [7]; and makes many unsubstantiated recommendations for dietary supplements. Mercola's reach has been greatly boosted by repeated promotion on the "Dr. Oz Show."   FDA Orders Dr. Joseph Mercola to Stop Illegal Claims.

Don't forget: The Skeptics' Circle is fast approaching

Well, 2008 is off to a great start with the Skeptics' Circle. It's fast approaching the time to see if the momentum can be maintained. Yes, it won't be long before the next Skeptics' Circle comes around the pike. Indeed, the next meeting of the Skeptics' Circle will appear on Thursday, January 17 and will be hosted by the Skeptical Surfer. As always, the guidelines for submissions to the Circle are here. Help him maintain the momentum and produce the second great Skeptics' Circle of the new year. If you're interested in hosting a Circle yourself, check out the schedule and the guidelines for…

Spot the flaw in the argument in this pitch...

Somehow, I don't know how, I managed to wind up on the mailing list of über-woomeister Dr. Joseph Mercola, who's almost as bad as Mike Adams, only less blatantly crazy in pushing conspiracy theories. Yesterday, I received this pitch by e-mail: I've got a quick question for you: How does your energy compare to the salmon swimming and jumping upstream for hundreds of miles? Facing tremendous obstacles -- fish ladders, rapids, predators -- they swim and jump for hundreds of miles to complete their incredible journey (without eating along the way). Could it be that their ocean diet gives them…

Food Crises and Technological Phobia « Biofortified

Recently,  a number of very informative article about global food security, genetically engineered crops and the CA labeling initiative  have been published. Here I provide links to a few:   Food Crises and Technological Phobia « Biofortified. GMO Crops: To Label Or Not To Label http://j.mp/S3ie0i  Scientific and Academic Community Responds to CA initiative on#GMO Labeling http://www.noprop37.com/press/scientific-and-academic-community-responds-to-qualification-of-ballot-measure-mandating-labeling-of-genetically-engineered-foods/ … Stop worrying; start growing - Fagström &al (2012) - EMBO…

The New York Times and fear mongering about the Apple Watch and wearable tech

The New York Times Styles Section giveth. The New York Times Styles Section taketh away. Last week, The NYT Styles Section published an excellent deconstruction of the pseudoscientific activities of Vani Hari, a.k.a. The Food Babe, by Courtney Rubin. Although skeptics might think that it was a tad too "balanced" (as did I), by and large we understand that this was the NYT Style section, and seeing a full-throated skeptical deconstruction of The Food Babe's antics in such a venue is just not in the cards. That's what I'm there for (not to mention other skeptics like Steve Novella), such as…

Sigh, another HuffPo atrocity against medicine

PalMD, PalMD, PalMD...why did you have to make me aware of this? What Most Doctors Won't Tell You About Preparing for the Swine Flu The blogger, Lisa Sharkey, opines: What can I do to keep my family safe? How can I boost our immune systems now and what complementary medicines can I begin taking immediately, regardless if I ever come in contact with the dreaded Swine Flu? You know what sort of answers are coming, I bet. That's right: Supplements, herbalism, homeopathy, reflexology, tapping, this post is a veritable cornucopia of quackery for swine flu, with Sharkey touting it all as "immune-…

Scientific medicine denialism: A brief (by Orac standards) proposal

Between sessions here at the AACR meeting, I started thinking. (I realize that's often a dangerous thing to do, but sometimes I can't help myself.) What I was thinking about was my annual bit of "fluff with a bite," the 2008 edition of "What is an altie?" Why, I don't know, but I was. Then, this morning while quickly perusing a few blogs and reading my e-mail before heading off to the meeting's morning session, I noticed something in yesterday's post about the commonality between creationists (evolution denialists), Holocaust deniers, and other forms of denialists. It was a term, a throwaway…

Stay classy, Dr. Joe. Stay classy.

It's amazing how these "natural" medicine mavens reveal their true nature when faced with a little adversity. As you may recall, Mike Adams was eliminated from the running for a Shorty Award in Health, thanks to the cluelessness of his fans and followers. He immediately erupted into tirades full of conspiracy-mongering, as well as a hilariously off-base, spittle-flecked attack on "skeptics" that was so full of straw men that his adopted Central American home will probably have to import straw for its farm animals for the foreseeable future. As a result of his being eliminated, Mike Adams…

Ask a toxicologist: Should I take bioidentical progesterone?

Question from LindaW: What's up with bioidentical hormones? Is it okay to take them? Bioidentical progesterone is a joke. Don't even think about buying it. Then, consult your doctor with your health concerns. Bioidentical progesterone is sold on numerous web pages after having been popularized by John Lee and now Joseph Mercola (and by findings that hormone replacement therapy isn't safe for everyone). It's unscientific and dangerous. Reason 1 As stated on some web site: 'Bioidentical hormone therapy has all of the good effects of HRT with none of the severe side-effects that have caused so…

Guess who's speaking at the NSTA National Conference

The featured speaker at this year's National Science Teacher Association conference in Boston is…Mayim Bialik. The lucky ones among you are saying right now, "who?". Others may know her from her television work, but maybe don't know the full story behind her 'science' activism. She's an actor who plays Sheldon's girlfriend on Big Bang Theory. Right there, as far as I'm concerned, we have a major strike against her: I detest that show. It's the equivalent of a minstrel show for scientists, where scientists are portrayed as gross caricatures of the real thing — socially inept, egotistical…

Is that really a disease? Epistemology and crank-ism

And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto the man to see what he would call them; and whatsoever the man would call every living creature, that was to be the name thereof. (Genesis 2:19) Human beings are great organizers. As far back as written history goes, people have named and classified what they observe. In fact, it forms the basis for modern science. Linnaean classification, based on observation of traits, predates modern cladistic and genomic classification of organisms, based on arguably more fundamental…

So much anti-vaccine crankery, so little time

It's amazing that anti-vaccine crankery persists. I went over to Joe Mercola's woo-palace again, and what should pop up but an article by Dr. Woo himself, Russell Blaylock. Apparently Russ and Joe are "good friends", which is appropriate, since both are doctors that aren't welcome in the profession. Blaylock believes that vaccines kill your brain. How does he know? "A tremendous amount of research has now demonstrated the link between chronic low-level brain inflammation, elevated brain glutamate levels and major depression" and "A great number of studies have shown that when you vaccinate…

Detoxification--the pinnacle of quackery

In another fit of sloth, I am migrating one of my favorites over from my old blog. If you haven't read it, it's new to you! --PalMD Many of my patients ask me about it; the TV is full of ads for it; you can't avoid it. "Detoxification" is apparently the pinnacle of modern health care, if you believe folks like Joseph Mercola and Gary Null, and the dozens of adds on late-night TV. For me to explain to you why even the very idea is laughable, I have to teach you a bit of human biochemistry---just a little, I promise. My scientific readers will find this grossly oversimplified, but hopefully…

Rock Stars of Science, part deux: coming to a GQ near you

The second edition of the Rock Stars of Science is now out online, and in the November 23rd ("Men of the Year") edition of GQ magazine. As Chris Mooney notes, this is a campaign funded by the Geoffery Beene Foundation, working to raise recognition of scientists' work (and scientists, period, since roughly half of the American population can't name a single living scientist). Part of the campaign is to make science noticeable and "cool;" I'll quote from the press release: ROCK S.O.S⢠aims to bridge a serious recognition gap for science, observes journalist Chris Mooney, co-author of the…

Dr. Oz: Looking for parents afraid of autism?

If there's a single TV show out there that has the widest reach when it abuses science-based medicine, there is no doubt that it's Oprah Winfrey's show. If there's a show that has the second-widest reach when it abuses science-based medicine, arguably it's Dr. Mehmet Oz's show. Whether it be his recent show featuring quackmaster supreme, Joseph Mercola, or his upcoming show featuring a faith healer, I fear that Dr. Oz has given up whatever claim he once had to promoting science-based medicine. Yes, it's true that he has had a soft spot for reiki for a long time, but other than that he's…

An open letter to my dad on the occasion of his recent anti-vax Facebook postings

Dear Pa, I know you care deeply about many issues, especially social justice. You're tired of wars, you're ashamed of the attempts to destroy social programs in this country, you hate seeing the unions that helped you as a worker provide for our family get dismantled by wealthy CEOs whose only goal is to make themselves and their cronies more wealthy. These are noble things to believe in, and values that you've instilled in your children. But you probably don't often consider how you select and digest (and frequently, share on Facebook) the stories that you'll accept as true. This is called…

The New York Times and fear mongering about the Apple Watch and wearable tech: The NYT response

Yesterday, I laid a heapin' helpin' of not-so-Respectful Insolence on a hapless—not to mention clueless—tech writer who for some reason wrote an article for the New York Times Styles section. The writer, Nick Bilton, surely deserved it. His article served up a massive pile of fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) about radiation from cell phones as a cause of cancer. His twist was to take advantage of the current hype over the recently announced Apple Watch to turn that FUD onto the Apple Watch and other gadgets that fall under the title of "wearable tech" using misinterpretations of studies…

How is it that I've never heard of David Avocado Wolfe before?

I've been at this skeptical blogging thing for over a decade now. I realize that I periodically remind you, my readers, of this and that perhaps I do it too often, but my reminders generally serve a purpose. Specifically, they serve to put an exclamation point on my surprise when I discover a new purveyor of pseudoscience and/or quackery that I had never heard of before but who is apparently fairly well known in the quackosphere. Such is what happened this week, when I learned of a man who appears to be challenging Deepak Chopra and Bruce Lipton for the title of most annoying mystical quack…

"Alternative medical income" (a.k.a. "woo pays the bills")

I've written a lot about alternative medicine, much of which I consider to be woo; i.e., treatments for which there is no medical efficacy and the belief in which often requires magical thinking. I've expressed my disappointment in medical physicians who fall prey to and become purveyors or woo, doctors such as Dr. Deepak Chopra, Dr. Joseph Mercola, those pushing to "integrate" woo into medical school curricula, and physicians who sell expensive "screening tests" such as breast MRI whose value has not been shown in valid, well-designed clinical trials. All of these activities represent, to me…

A fungus among us in oncology?

I don't much like Mike Adams of NaturalNews.com (formerly NewsTarget.com). Indeed, I haven't yet been able to find a more blatant purveyor of the worst kind of quackery and paranoid anti-physician and anti-medicine conspiracy theories anywhere on the Internet, with the possible exception of Whale.to. However, Whale.to is so utterly, outrageously, incoherently full of not just quackery but paranoid New World Order conspiracy theories and other paranormal silliness that any but the most deluded can easily see it for what it is with just a cursory reading of a few of its many, many pages. It's…

Unexpected praise of the virtues of bacon by Joe Mercola

It is an indisputable axiom that everything tastes better with bacon. Well, almost everything. As much as I love bacon, whenever I watch one of those cooking competition shows on the Food Network, like Iron Chef America, in which the secret ingredient is bacon, I can't figure out how putting bacon in ice cream works. OK, so maybe it's almost an axiom. There are a few exceptions. But the fact remains that the vast majority of foods do taste better with some bacon. Of course, the problem with bacon is that it's widely accepted that it's not particularly good for you. Because it is a processed…

America's quack: Dr. Mehmet Oz

Sometimes, when you're blogging, serendipity strikes. Sometimes this takes the form of having something appear related to something you just blogged about. Yesterday, I discussed one of the biggest supporters of quackery on the Internet, Mike Adams, a.k.a. the Health Ranger, proprietor of NaturalNews.com, one of the quackiest, if not the quackiest site, on the Internet, NaturalNews.com. This time around, I was simply using one of Adams' wonderfully incoherent defenses of alternative medicine thinking to demonstrate how much magical thinking exists at the core of alternative medicine and how…

Your Friday Dose of Woo: Applied kinesiology, but only more woo-ful

I have an MD and a PhD. While many people find that to be impressive, personally I've become so inured of it that I certainly don't take note of it much anymore. Certainly, I rarely point it out. So, you may ask, why am I pointing it out this time, even going so far as to start a post with it? The answer is simple. If there was one thing I always thought about having both an MD and a PhD, it's that it should render one more resistant to pseudoscience and woo. I know, I know, maybe I'm being incredibly arrogant or incredibly naive--possibly both--but it was what I thought for a long time, even…

Ron Paul: Quackery enabler

Lately, bloggers, including some of my fellow ScienceBloggers, have been expressing various concerns about the phenomenon that is Ron Paul, the Republican candidate who's ridden a wave of discontent to do surprisingly well in the polls leading up to the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primaries. First, Jake and Greg have pointed out that Ron Paul apparently does not accept the theory of evolution. The other day, Ed Brayton and Sara Robinson discussed a story about an open letter by Bill White, the leader of the American Socialist Workers' Party, in which White claimed that Paul and his aides…

If you want some cancer woo, and you want it now, who ya gonna call? Mike Adams!

In a way, I have to hand it to Mike Adams. As you may recall, Mike Adams is the man behind what is arguably one of the top two or three woo-filled sites on the Internet, NaturalNews.com (formerly known as NewsTarget.com). I'm hard-pressed to come up with an example of someone who can deliver delusional paranoid conspiracy-mongering against the FDA, CDC, and big pharma, antivaccination lunacy, overblown claims about cancer, and (in my considered medical opinion, of course), dangerous cancer quackery, all in one tidy, ranting package. Sometimes the stuff Adams writes is so over-the-top that I…

Just what Dr. Egnor wanted for Christmas: Some not-so-Respectful Insolence!

It's Christmas Eve. I know, I know, it's all supposed to be Peace On Earth, Good Will Towards Men (and Women), and all that jazz. Really, that's exactly what I had intended for today and tomorrow. Indeed, my plan was to do nothing more than a quickie post today and a maybe a couple of brief (and hopefully amusing) Christmas-related posts this afternoon and tomorrow. Really, I had. Then it came, and it came from a direction that I least expected. Yes, yet another "old friend" of the blog had to go and and not just ask but beg for a heapin' helpin' of not-so-Respectful Insolence. My readers…

The scam of "detox": Ritual purification by another name

"You need to detox." How many times have you heard or read this? Maybe a friend of yours suggested it for the New Year. Maybe you saw it on a website, in a magazine, or as part of an ad. I like to say sometimes, "Toujours les toxines," because in many branches of alternative medicine the overarching idea behind the interventions used is that vague, unnamed "toxins" are somehow poisoning you and that the only way to fix what's wrong with you is to "detoxify." These "detox" interventions can take many forms, ranging from the relatively (but not completely) benign, such as "juice cleanses," to…

A ghoul descends upon the corpse of Tony Snow

I was contemplating how to get back into the swing of things as far as getting the blogging juices flowing again after the unfortunate events of the last few days, given how much my last post drained me. I suppose I could have dived into the infamous PZ versus the cracker incident, but, quite frankly, the utter ridiculousness and childishness of the whole affair bored and disgusted me too much, although I don't rule out a brief post about it later today or tomorrow (that is, if anyone even still cares). If I do, I guarantee that my take on the whole kerfluffle will make no one happy, but it…