fraud
oracknows | June 28, 2016Forgive me, dear readers.
Ever since Mike Adams, the crank who runs and “alternative health” empire and a website with as much traffic as the NIH website, started targeting me two months ago with a series of libelous posts, I haven’t mentioned him much, for the simple reason that I don’t want to drive any traffic his way. Also, after his having posted 25(!) articles targeting me over the last two months, the most recent just this weekend, I realized that addressing him directly is too much like wrestling a pig in mud. You get dirty, and the pig likes it. However, yesterday, Adams outdid…
oracknows | March 16, 2016Last night was one of those nights where, for whatever reason, I ran out of steam. Whether it was residual effects from the change to daylight savings time this weekend or just a day in the operating room, I don't know, but I crashed on the couch hard, at least until lighting and thunder from the storms rolling through between 2 and 3 AM woke me up for a little while.
Fortunately, I do have a little tidbit to post, a very good one as well. Remember, the "pH Miracle Living" quack, Robert O. Young? He claims to be a naturopath, but even that claim, like pretty much everything he claims, seems…
oracknows | August 23, 2013About a week and a half ago, I wrote about a local oncologist who was arrested by the FBI for massive Medicare fraud in which physician involved diagnosed cancers that weren't there, gave chemotherapy to patients who either didn't have cancer or were in remission and thus didn't need it, and had developed a self-referral system to his own imaging facility. The story of this oncologist, Dr. Farid Fata, founder of a very large multi-location oncology practice (Michigan Hematology Oncology), made international news, which is exactly not the sort of coverage Detroit needs right now, given all the…
oracknows | August 12, 2013I've spent a lot of time on this blog discussing failures of the medical system. Usually, such discussions occur in the context of how unscientific practices and even outright quackery have managed to infiltrate what should be science=based medicine (SBM) in the form of so-called "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) or "integrative medicine," in which the quackery of alternative medicine is "integrated" with SBM. However, as big a problem as the infiltration of unscientific CAM practices into medicine is, there is a threat at least as grave here in the U.S. (and, I presume, in many…
denialism | February 29, 2012Via Ed I find out about a Psychic in Colorado sentenced to 5 years for fraud.
BOULDER, Colo. (CBS4)- A woman claiming to be a psychic has been sentenced to five years behind bars for stealing more than $300,000 from her clients.
Nancy Marks told her victims she needed their cash and credit card numbers to "draw out bad energy."
In Dec. 2010, a jury in Boulder found Marks guilty on 14 counts of fraud and tax evasion.
Now here is what I find confusing. How is this woman different (other than the tax evasion) from other psychics who claim to be able to predict the future, talk to ghosts, or…
grrlscientist | June 20, 2010tags: Cala Boca Galvão, hoax, fraud, prank, humor, funny, satire, meme, World Cup football 2010, Brasil, Rede Globo, Galvão Bueno, Carlos Eduardo dos Santos Galvão Bueno, streaming video
Anatomy of an elaborate hoax: If you know anything about birds, then you knew immediately that none of the parrots portrayed in these videos are known as the "Galvão", nor are (most of them) endangered, nor are their feathers used in any sort of Brazilian celebration.
If you do have even a rudimentary knowledge of Portuguese, then you know that Cala Boca Galvão actually means "shut your mouth, Galvão…
revere | May 6, 2010Just because a company got it right once doesn't mean they'll get it right all the time. Back in the day, one of the great crisis management success stories was was Johnson & Johnson's handling of a case where someone intentionally introduced cynanide into on the shelf bottles of Tylenol in the fall of 1982 in the Chicago area. Seven people died. If you ever have trouble opening your over the counter or prescription drug bottles, you can thank the creep who did it -- whoever that is. No one was ever caught.
Here's a concise summary of the 1982 poisonings, courtesy Wikipedia:
Wednesday…
revere | May 4, 2010Everybody (including us) is talking about people crossing US borders illegally, but lots of things cross borders (pollution, wildlife, pathogens). Services cross borders whenever we reach a call center in Bangladore and of course so do commodities. Commodities like foodstuffs or medicines or toys may or may not be subject to regulations for safety and many are subject to tariffs to protect domestic industries. It turns out that a lot of these commodities are also in this country "illegally." Take honey:
The tariffs were attached to the import of Chinese honey about two years ago because…
terrasig | February 3, 2010A few weeks ago, we discussed (1, 2) some of the drugs confiscated by authorities who searched the Sedona resort room occupied by self-help guru, James Ray, following the October 2009 deaths of three followers who paid nearly $10,000 each for his Spiritual Warrior retreat program.
Late this afternoon, Ray was arrested - the best news and supporting information continues to come from The Prescott (AZ) News, with a sidebar to the lower right of the story that links to their extensive timeline of coverage:
The Yavapai County Grand Jury returned a "true bill" on 3 counts of Manslaughter against…
oracknows | January 23, 2010Oh, yes, my brothers and sisters, we have done it!
My pharma paymasters are very, very pleased indeed with me and all of their other blogging and Twittering minions. Very, very pleased indeed. In fact, they are cackling with glee over the discomfiture of one of their greatest enemies, Mike Adams, a.k.a. The Health Ranger! This brave rebel's plan to attack the conspiracy by winning a Shorty Award in Health has been thwarted, thanks to the efforts of you and me, oh my brothers and sisters, and The Health Ranger has gone completely mental about it:
I was set to take the top prize, and Dr.…
grrlscientist | June 24, 2009tags: book review, Unholy Business, religious antiquities, biblical antiquities, fraud, Christianity, Judaism, Nina Burleigh
There are two different types
of people in the world,
those who want to know,
and those who want to believe.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
In November 2002, an ancient carved limestone burial box designed to hold the disarticulated skeleton of a dead person was put on public display in Canada's Royal Ontario Museum. Although common throughout Israel, this particular box, known as an ossuary, was unusual because it was inscribed. Even more remarkable, its ancient Aramaic…
ddobbs | May 18, 2009A few weeks ago, when I posted that "Uh-oh: POW benefit claimants exceed recorded POWs, one reader wrote saying the post made her wonder whether I have "a problem with veterans." As one reader noted, a concern with bogus POWs suggests I have a problem with -- well, bogus POWs. Should it not bother us when people masquerading as POWs are collecting benefits and kudos and sympathies they didn't earn â and which others earned through rather excruciating means?
Now it's bothered a couple members of Congress who served in the military, as the press release from Rep. Mike Coffman, R-CO, describes…
revere | April 24, 2009As an academic epidemiologist I routinely do NIH funded research involving human subjects. That means my university must adhere to very strict regulations and guidelines for the protection of research subjects. Approval and monitoring of the ethical conduct of research funded by the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), of which NIH is a part, was made a legal requirement in the 1970s following widespread abuses, of which the Tuskeegee Syphilis Study and the experiments by Nazi doctors were the most notorious. But less flagrant ethical breeches were widespread in medical research. I…
oracknows | February 21, 2009I don't know what "scuzz-wo" means, but I agree that Andrew Wakefield is one. My only nit to pick is that the puppet flirts a little too close to conflating the thimerosal scare with the MMR scare. There never was any thimerosal in the MMR vaccine. But that's just a nit, and as a blogger it's my job to pick it.
First Stephen Colbert takes on Jenny McCarthy. Now, a puppet eviscerates Andrew Wakefield. He is nothing but a joke now.
You know, though, the puppet Stephen Colbert's description of Jenny McCarthy reminds me of her son's doctor, if you know what I mean:
"Now sure, she's not the kind…
revere | June 9, 2008Last fall the animal slaughter giant Tyson Foods, Inc. was selling chickens with a USDA approved label, "raised without antibiotics." Some people thought that was a bit misleading insofar as Tyson routinely used ionophores in their feed designed to prevent a fungal disease in the birds. The USDA classes ionophores as antibiotics. The agency had "overlooked" the additive and when it was forcefully brought to their attention, they asked Tyson to add words to their label indicating it used no antibiotics that could cause antibiotic resistance in humans. Tyson added the words in December but…
revere | April 16, 2008Thanks to a local health officer in Colorado I get word that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has begun an investigation of claims made by my favorite infomercial quacks, the Kinoki Foot Bad folks (see my howl of pain in the post The TV ad that DRIVES ME CRAZY). Here's some of the AP story:
Late night television infomercials seem to have a cheap fix for anything: lose weight, banish cellulite or improve conditions like diabetes, arthritis and insomnia.
Or, all of the above.
Ads for Kinoki Foot Pads made exactly that bold claim, saying the pads use secrets of ancient Japanese medicine…
revere | February 7, 2008I'm glad the FDA has gotten serious about people knowingly importing and selling tainted food from China. They have indicted two Chinese nationals living in the US and an executive of an American company. It would be nice if they did this for foods that threaten human beings, but for the next 347 days I guess I'll have to settle for crimes against pets.
Several companies are involved, including Suzhou Textiles, Silk, Light Industrial Products, Arts and Crafts I/E Co. LTD. (SSC), a Chinese export broker that exports products from China to the United States; and ChemNutra, Inc., a Las Vegas,…
revere | February 2, 2008Last week we brought you the Kinoki Footpad and the TV ad that drives me crazy. Not all infomercials are so stupid. Some sell products with genuine health benefits. I spend a lot of time sitting in front of a computer (like at this moment) so I don't get enough exercise. And my abs? Forget it (bad visual).
But as Mike Huckabee (or was it Bill Clinton) might say, Hope is a Chair called Hawaii:
revere | March 8, 2007We don't write much about quackery here. My SciBling colleagues like Orac at Respectful Insolence cover this. Sometimes I make an exception. This is one of those times. This is about magnet therapy, the belief that magnetic devices can cure you of many diseases or relieve you of symptoms. The magnet itself doesn't do anything but these devices can be dangerous in other ways, for example, by resulting in fatally delayed treatment for an otherwise preventable condition. Mostly, though, they are just an efficient way to do a wallet-ectomy.
Or so we thought. Tuesday we heard of an entirely new…
revere | June 17, 2006Some of the really good issues ads on TV these days come from oil giant British Petroleum (BP). They feature ordinary looking people who ask tough questions about energy policy to which BP just responds with a brief statement that they are working on it and "it's a start." Very understated, earnest and quite effective. Great website, too. Compare the BP ads to the annoying and terrible oil and gas industry ads that feature actors and quick cuts, repeated key words and plaintive entreaties (eyes rolled skywards), like "just tell us the truth," followed by a URL where presumably you will find…