Quackery
oracknows | August 5, 2009Did you know that acupuncture is very much related to astrology?
No, it's not just because both of woo. Rather, it's likely true that the whole concept of "meridians," those invisible "channels" through which our life energy (a.k.a. qi) allegedly flow were indirectly based on astrological signs, which had been used to guide points used by ancient healers for bloodletting. Indeed, far from being "ancient wisdom," by the middle of the second century, needling had been mostly abandoned and even banned by the Imperial Medical Academy in China and prohibited in Japan, only to be resurrected by…
oracknows | August 2, 2009Due to annoying stuff at work and good stuff personally, I didn't have time to grind out my usual bit of Insolence, either Respectful or not-so-Respectful, today. Fortunately, there is a long history on this blog, full of good stuff that I can repost. So, as I did when I went to TAM7, I'm picking a couple of posts for today that originally appeared in August. This one happens to have first appeared in August 2006; so if you haven't been reading at least three years, it's new to you (and if you have, I hope you enjoy it a second time).
I'll be back tomorrow.
So, after nearly two weeks of…
oracknows | July 31, 2009One of the advantages of having been a blogger for nearly five years is that you gain a sense of perspective after having written about various issues over and over for a long time. True, the disadvantage is that it sometimes becomes difficult to think of something new to say about longstanding issues. Even so, it's still quite useful, every so often, to take a look back over a longstanding issue of interest to the blog (more like a festering sore that keeps getting worse), and a new article in Salon.com gives me a perfect excuse to do just that. The topic has been a frequent topic on this…
oracknows | July 30, 2009It's that time yet again, time for another meeting of the Skeptics' Circle. This time around, Beyond the Short Coat hosts a nightmare. No, really, a nightmare. Remember Mitchell and Web's vision of what a Homeopathic A & E would look like? The 116th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle goes way, way beyond that. Here's hoping I don't get injured or sick or injured any time soon.
Next up is Ionian Enchantment on August 13. Help purge this horrific vision of the future of medicine by lining up posts now.
oracknows | July 29, 2009A while back, I wrote about the grievous miscarriage of justice that occurred to Simon Singh in the form of a ruling against him in the libel suit brought against him by the British Chiropractic Association. Suffice it to say, that the BCA is using the U.K.'s exceedingly plaintiff-friendly libel laws to silence legitimate criticism of the dubious practices of its members. This resulted in a campaign from the British pro-science organization Sense About Science to Keep Libel Laws Out of Science.
Now, I learn that, true to Internet tradition, the attempt to suppress information or punish…
oracknows | July 28, 2009In discussions of that bastion of what Harriet Hall (a.k.a. The SkepDoc) likes to call "tooth fairy science," where sometimes rigorous science, sometimes not, is applied to the study of hypotheses that are utterly implausible and incredible from a basic science standpoint (such as homeopathy or reiki), the National Center of Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), I've often taken Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) to task. That's because Senator Harkin is undeniably the father of that misbegotten beast that has sucked down over $2.5 billion of taxpayer money with nothing to show for it. It's…
oracknows | July 27, 2009Last week, I expressed my surprise and dismay that the Atheist Alliance International chose Bill Maher for the Richard Dawkins Award. I was dismayed because Maher has championed pseudoscience, including dangerous antivaccine nonsense, germ theory denialism complete with repeating myths about Louis Pasteur supposedly recanting on his deathbed, a href="http://oracknows.blogspot.com/2005/12/bill-maher-anti-vax-wingnut.html">hostility towards "Western medicine" and an affinity for "alternative medicine," a history of sympathy to HIV/AIDS denialists, and the activities of PETA through his…
oracknows | July 26, 2009While I'm holed up in my Sanctum Sanctorum grinding out prose that I hope will keep my lab funded for another three years, I'm going to fall back on a lazy blogging trick to keep the posts flowing for one more day, namely the obnoxious reader e-mail. (Don't worry, there'll be new insolence tomorrow.) This time, I'm feeling the love from a reader named Shawn, who, unlike yesterday's correspondent, was not polite. It's not as wingnutty as some of what P.Z gets (come on, guys, you can do better!), but it's entertaining nonetheless:
You and Stephen Barrett should be butt buddies. Mr quackwatch…
oracknows | July 25, 2009Last night, I received an e-mail from a fairly well-known atheist (no, it wasn't Richard Dawkins, although that would have been totally cool) criticizing me for my post about Bill Maher's complete unsuitability for the Richard Dawkins Award. I'm not going to reprint my response to that part, because, well, his criticisms were pretty much a boilerplate of other blowback I've received from the post. What caught my attention more was that he noticed a couple of posts of mine about Jenny McCarthy.
I'll paraphrase, because I don't have this person's permission to post his e-mail. Not that that…
oracknows | July 24, 2009It's been a pretty good week on the ol' blog here, with lots of good material to draw from, finishing up yesterday with my expression of disdain for the choice of Bill Maher for the Richard Dawkins Award. I expected some blowback for my criticism, and I got some. However, I was surprised at how mild it was, at least from the one person I expected to defend the decision, P.Z. Myers. Quite frankly, his defense of the decision to select Bill Maher struck me as enormously half-hearted, in essence saying, "Sure he's a wingnut, but he's our wingnut, and, oh, by the way, all that quackery he…
oracknows | July 23, 2009Although I often don't agree with him and have cooled on him lately, I still rather like--even admire--Richard Dawkins. While it's true I've taken him to task for having a tin ear for bioethics, lamented his walking blindly right into charges of anti-Semitism (no, I don't think he's an anti-Semite), and half-defended/half-criticized him for seeming to endorsing eugenics. What's really irritated me about him in the past, though, is his use of the "Neville Chamber atheist" gambit that I so detest, so much so that I once featured Dawkins in a Hitler Zombie episode (albeit not as the victim). On…
oracknows | July 21, 2009Ever since Jenny McCarthy hitched her fading star to the anti-vaccine movement and managed to get Oprah Winfrey to go along for the ride, she has become the public face of the anti-vaccine movement. Unfortunately, there hasn't been nearly as much blowback as there should be in the mainstream press, although bloggers have been all over McCarthy's promotion of the worst lies of the anti-vaccine movement and advocacy of autism quackery. Then I came across this the other day:
I'm of two minds on this. While it's a good thing to see cartoonists ridiculing Jenny McCarthy and Oprah for their…
oracknows | July 21, 2009If there's one characteristic of the anti-vaccine movement that helps define them as true cranks, it's a streak of conspiracy theory mania. It's not too much of an exaggeration when I wonder if they think that the Lizard Men have taken over the government, the CDC, and the American Academy of Pediatrics in order to use vaccines in a New World Order plot to make all of our children autistic. Or something. I'm never quite sure. Knowing this particular aspect of the anti-vaccine movement, the only thing that surprises me is that they haven't joined the forces arrayed against President Obama's…
oracknows | July 20, 2009I've had a lot of fun over the last couple of years deconstructing the black holes of woo that a certain advocate of "natural" remedies likes to lay down on a regular basis. Yes, I'm referring to a guy named Mike Adams, who runs a website called NaturalNews.com. Indeed, Adams has made NaturalNews.com a bastion of quackery and outright wingnuttery.
Apparently that isn't enough.
I don't know how long it's been around, but apparently Mike Adams is branching out. Now he's decided that he wants to do a wiki about "natural" living. He's calling it, appropriately enough, Naturalpedia:
Welcome to…
oracknows | July 17, 2009I realize that this week in practically every new post I've been mentioning TAM7. It hasn't exactly been intentional, believe it or not, at least aside from my recap a on Tuesday and my request for photos from those of you who attended. Oddly enough, although I mentioned how proud I was to be part of the Anti-Anti-Vax Panel discussion, where I joined Joe Albietz, Steve Novella, Mike Goudeau (skeptic, juggler, entertainer, producer, and writer who has an autistic child), Harriet Hall, and Derek Bartholomaus, I didn't really discuss some of the thoughts that the panel's discussion inspired in…
oracknows | July 15, 2009I tell ya, I'm gone for a few days, and the woo-meisters take over the store!
Seriously, I was really, really tempted to blog this over the weekend, even though I was at The Amazing Meeting and even though I had promised myself that I would not blog during the meeting. It was that tempting. Now it's a few days after I first learned about it, and I wondered it it was still worth blogging.
It is.
The story begins with, seemingly innocently enough, a press release by the Lymphoma Association:
We are delighted to announce the appointment of our new Chief Executive, Sally Penrose.
Sally joined us…
oracknows | July 14, 2009First, Mitchell and Webb took on homeopathy. This week, it's bogus (word choice intentional) "nutritionists":
oracknows | July 12, 2009I'm currently in Las Vegas at The Amazing Meeting. Believe it or not, I was even on a panel! While I'm gone, I'll probably manage to do a new post or two, but, in the meantime, while I'm away communing with fellow skeptics at TAM7, I'll be reposting some Classic Insolence from the month of July in years past. (After all, if you haven't been following this blog at least a year, it'll be new to you. And if you have I hope you enjoy it again.) This particular post first appeared in July 2007.
Mike Adams is an idiot.
There, I said it.
Adams runs the NewsTarget website, a repository for all…
oracknows | July 11, 2009I'm currently in Las Vegas at The Amazing Meeting. Believe it or not, I was even on a panel! While I'm gone, I'll probably manage to do a new post or two, but, in the meantime, while I'm away communing with fellow skeptics at TAM7, I'll be reposting some Classic Insolence from the month of July in years past. (After all, if you haven't been following this blog at least a year, it'll be new to you. And if you have I hope you enjoy it again.) This particular post first appeared in July 2008.
I suppose I had better get ready for another e-mail with a wounded, puppy-dog, plaintive complaint of "…
oracknows | July 10, 2009I'm currently in Las Vegas anxiously waiting for The Amazing Meeting to start. Believe it or not, I'll even be on a panel later today! While I'm gone, I'll probably manage to do a new post or two, but, in the meantime, while I'm away communing with fellow skeptics at TAM7, I'll be reposting some Classic Insolence from the month of July in years past. (After all, if you haven't been following this blog at least a year, it'll be new to you. And if you have I hope you enjoy it again.) This particular post first appeared in July 2006.
I have to apologize for last week's Dose of Woo. No, I'm not…