Huffington Post
oracknows | September 29, 2017John Weeks has long been an activist for what is now known as "integrative medicine," earlier known as "complementary and alternative medicine"(CAM). Basically, for many years Mr. Weeks has been at the forefront of encouraging the "integration" of quackery with real medicine and promoting what I like to refer to as "quackademic medicine," a perfect term to describe the increasing encroachment of pseudoscience and quackery in medical academia in the form of—you guessed it—integrative medicine.
Despite his having zero background in scientific research or the design and execution of experiments…
oracknows | December 3, 2013I don't normally ask you, my readers for much, if anything, other than to read and for the subset of you who like to be active in the comments to have at it and, if so inclined, to cover my back by swatting down the trolls, quacks, and antivaccinationists who occasionally show up to infest the comments, so that I don't have to. However, given the story of Stanislaw Burzysnki, which I've been covering with frequent blog posts for over two years now, how could I not listen to the appeal of my friend and co-conspirator (note to Burzysnki fans: that "co-conspirator" bit was sarcasm) to take…
denialism | March 22, 2012Our initial optimism over Huffpo science being a haven for reason in a den of disease-promotion and quackery appears now to be misplaced. It appears the animal rights cranks have made inroads with Bruce Friedrich, a member of PETA and advocate of animal liberation, who has jumped from Huffpo "green" to Huffpo "science". The science gatekeepers at Huffpo have clearly failed.
Writing about "Speciesism: The Movie", he exposes the anti-science ideology of the animal rights movement, and Huffpo science doesn't seem to have noticed:
Every now and then, a movie comes along that is capable of…
denialism | January 5, 2012Seth Mnookin has reasons to hope. It has been clear though for years that Huffpo was a clearinghouse for what I would describe as liberal crankery, which includes things like Jenny McCarthy's anti-vaccine crankery, or Bill Maher's anti-pharma paranoia.
But now they have a new site, Huffpo Science, and after my head stopped ringing from that particular oxymoron I went and checked it out.
A lead article on going to Mars by Buzz Aldrin was interesting. An article on Frankenmeat came out relatively clean without getting all paranoid about GMO foods or lab-grown nutrients being less pure…
kcollins | July 25, 2011
While this image may look like a creature from a science fiction movie, it's actually a hydrothermal worm marine organism viewed on an electron microscope from festival sponsor FEI Company, a world leader in the production and distribution of electron microscopes, including scanning electron microscopes (SEM), transmission electron microscopes (TEM), DualBeamâ¢Â instruments, and focused ion beam tools (FIB), for nanoscale research. See this recent Huffington Post article for more information on the image.
What microscopic organisms would you like to photograph through an electron microscope…
oracknows | July 8, 2010I've been a critic of Arianna Huffington's massive group blog, The Huffington Post, since three weeks after it first blighted the blogosphere. That's when I first noticed that the "health" section (such as it is) of HuffPo had already become a wretched hive of scum and anti-vaccine quackery, something I began documenting again and again and again and again and again over five years ago, before Salon.com and Rolling Stone flushed their credibility right down the crapper with Robert F. Kennedy's infamous conspiracy mongering about thimerosal in vaccines. Indeed, I continue to document the…
dblum | July 5, 2010A couple days ago I received this note:
"There was an article in the Huffington Post not long ago about an extreme worst case scenario with the oil spill - that a giant methane bubble bursts through the sea floor, ignites, causes a huge supersonic tsunami that would wipe out all of Florida, followed by a vaporization tsunami.
I've heard this described as "disaster porn", and certainly, the scenario smacks of it. But, there have been extreme natural disasters in the past, and not being a geologist, I can't help but feel some alarm at this, as I'm currently a resident of Tampa. I have…
oracknows | March 9, 2010Way back on May 25, 2005, I first noticed something about a certain political group blog. It was something unsavory, something vile, something pseudoscientific. It was the fetid stench of quackery, but not just any quackery. It was anti-vaccine quackery, and the blog was Arianna Huffington's Huffington Post, where a mere 16 days after its being unleashed upon an unsuspecting world I characterized the situation as Antivaccination rhetoric running rampant on The Huffington Post. It was the start of a long running series that rapidly resulted in parts 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 in the course of a mere…
palmd | May 8, 2009I can't tell if it is a trend yet, but it seems there has been a bit of a decrease in the outright quackery published in the Huffington Post lately. But that doesn't mean it's disappeared, and the poor quality of the writing more than makes up for the decreased quantity.
Case in point: Why We Overreacted to an Ordinary Flu, by Philip Slater, a sociologist with no medical education (a point that becomes evident very quickly). For example:
In an online newsletter recently some mad housewives were sharing tips on how best to triple-wash and triple-sterilize their countertops. What on earth…
palmd | May 1, 2009Remember the Quack Miranda Warning? You know, the magic phrase that makes all the crappy and dangerous medical advice you're about to give OK?
Well, look what HuffPo's doing:
Author's note: This swine flu story on alternative and complementary medicine is not meant to replace anything you hear from you doctor, the WHO or the CDC, but is meant to show you some natural ways to enhance your overall wellness in addition to any medication you may need either to prevent or treat the flu.
Heh. Shit wrapped in gold foil smells just the same as shit in a brown bag tied with twine.
ejohnson | May 1, 2009
With the recent addition of Patricia Fitzgerald to The Huffington Post's editorial staff as "Wellness" editor, ScienceBloggers are ripping apart the medical articles pushed through to the public eye by HuffPo and Fitzgerald--whose biography states is a "licensed acupuncturist, certified clinical nutritionist, and a homeopath"--with all the force of a black hole. Writes ScienceBlogger PalMD, "In the fight for truth and honesty in journalism, I propose the following more accurate titles for the HuffPo medical writers who are commonly referred to as "Dr": Patricia Fitzgerald, Doctor of…
palmd | April 30, 2009The time is now. The gauntlet of idiocy rests at our feet. Shall we turn and walk away, or shall we bend down, pick it up, and accept the challenge? What? What's that you say? Turn from the forces of darkness?
ARE WE NOT WO/MEN?!?
We must not turn from the task before us. The Huffington Post has spit in the eye of reason, and worse, has aided in the proliferation of horridly deceptive health news, thinly-disguised infomercials, and frankly dangerous lies.
We have nothing left but our honor, and our honor demands vendetta.
Now, before you start sharpening your knives, I'm actually asking…
tsmith | April 28, 2009I was introduced to snake oil salesmen at a young age. My mother was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis when I was in kindergarten, and while she has mostly followed the advice of her neurologists, she's also looked into "alternate" therapies, ranging from the relatively harmless (massages, oils, etc.) to more invasive methods (chelation, all sorts of expensive but worthless supplements). Some of these I've been able to talk her out of (and I personally think her current doctor--NOT a neurologist--is a total quack), but others she's taken because, hey, "what's the harm?" It's frustrating to…
palmd | April 28, 2009We have a lot to cover today, but first things first: the Big Question. If you'll cast your memory way back (thanks, Van) you'll remember that a good question to ask altmed followers is the one of abandonment: what would it take for them to abandon a modality? Well, the answers are in, and the one's who answered just didn't get it. For example:
[T]he question was: "Can you please give specific examples of alternative medicine theories and modalities that have been abandoned because they have been found to be ineffective?"
The short and honest answer to this is no-- I cant. But my reason…
palmd | April 23, 2009It's no secret that I think the Huffington Post is an teeming den execrable pseudoscientific snakes. Still, when it comes to fanning the vaccination manufatroversy, they are really off the deep end. Take the latest piece of dreck on Jenny McCarthy, GoD (Google Doctorate). It's written by the infamous "Dr." Patricia Fitzgerald, and this is where I get cranky. Worse than all the drivel spouted by Jenny is HuffPo giving their imprimatur of authority to Fitzgerald. Let me 'splain.
Look, there's a lot of ways to legitimately gain the title of "doctor". The most common are to go to a…
palmd | April 22, 2009Yes, that's right, the Huffington Post, that broadsheet of blarney, that tabloid of medical trumpery has done it. Not content to risk our mental health by lending legitimacy to all kinds of pseudoscientific charlatans, they just let Jim Carrey write a piece on vaccines and autism. Yes, the boyfriend of uber-fukwit Jenny McCarthy has drunk her Kool Aid, but that's no surprise. I'll leave a good fisking to others, because a few of the commenters showed signs of higher cortical function, and this deserves some coverage.
Take this one for example:
I think Jim and Jenny McCarthy are instilling…
palmd | April 22, 2009Just when you think the Huffington Post can't get any more inane and idiotic, just when you think your synapses might be starting to heal, they come out with another post that simply makes your ears bleed.
Sure, HuffPo regularly comes down on the side of superstition, for example in the vaccine manufactroversy; and sure, they sometimes veer into the lane of deceptive medical infomercials. But I sort of held out hope that they wouldn't resort to hosting potential fraud.
Fraud, you say? Well, not clearly. But, just as we in the Midwest know that when the sky turns that certain shade of…
palmd | April 19, 2009My regular readers know that I hold the Huffington Post in the lowest possible regard when it comes to its medical writing. HuffPo offers a daily platform for the worst pseudo-science and infectious disease promotion. Apparently that was getting to hard, because now I think their down to phoning it in. Last week's post by a "body cleanse expert" reads like a late-night infomercial, and is about as accurate.
The article, with the fanciful title of, "Antibiotics Cause Cancer?" is written by Kim Evans whose medical qualifications are apparently limited to selling books on how to cleanse your…
oracknows | March 30, 2009Anyone who's read this blog for more than a month knows my dismal opinion of Indigo woo girl, ex-Playboy Playmate, and gross-out comedienne Jenny McCarthy, who since having a child diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder has transformed herself from D-list celebrity to A-list, where the "A" stands for "antivaccine." Her combination of obnoxiousness, the arrogance of ignorance, and a dogged determination to stoke the embers of the discredited idea that vaccines somehow cause autism have endangered public health in this country in the year and a half since she published her first autism book…
oracknows | March 27, 2009Since its very inception, the Huffington Post has been a hotbed of antivaccine lunacy. Shortly after that, antivaccine woo-meisters like David Kirby, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Kimg Stagliano, and, apparently, one of the editors (Special Projects Editor Rachel Sklar) were joined by all-purpose woo-meisters like Deepak Chopra. True, for a brief period of time there appeared to be an occasional voice for vaccines on HuffPo, but they never lasted. After all, RFK, Jr.'s been there nearly four years now and David Kirby almost as long, while pro-vaccine commentary pops up briefly, gets shouted down by…