quackery
oracknows | May 13, 2015After having written yesterday's piece about the fallacy known as the appeal to nature, a favorite fallacy of the alternative medicine crowd. The idea that if something is somehow "natural" it must be superior to anything viewed as "unnatural" or "man-made" is deeply ingrained in pseudoscientific medicine. Heck, there's even a brand of quackery known as "naturopathy" because it supposedly utilizes the "healing power of nature" when in reality is takes what I sometimes call a "Chinese menu" approach to quackery; i.e., one from column A, two from column B, one from homeopathy, two from…
oracknows | May 6, 2015As hard as it is to believe, I've been spending a significant part of my time countering pseudoscience for close to 17 years, so long that it seems that I've always been doing it. Of course, that's not true; I didn't actually become involved in this seemingly never-ending Sisyphean task until I was in my mid-30s, which means that the majority of my life had been spent more or less blissfully ignorant that there are people out there who passionately believe, for example, that vaccines are dangerous and cause autism and that bleach enemas can reverse that autism or that there were quacks out…
oracknows | April 30, 2015If there's one thing that will annoy an antivaccinationist, it's to call her what she is: Antivaccine. While it's true, as I've pointed out on numerous occasions, that there are some antivaccinationists who are antivaccine and proud, unabashedly proclaiming themselves antivaccine and making no bones about it, the vast majority of antivaccinationists deny they are antivaccine. They frequently retort that they are "not antivaccine" but rather "pro-vaccine safety" or some such dodge. Most recently, we've seen this tack taken by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (and, of course, Bill Maher) himself, the…
oracknows | April 24, 2015Last week, a group of ten doctors led by Dr. Henry Miller, most of whom were affiliated either with the Hoover Institution or the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH)—or both—wrote a letter to Lee Goldman, MD, the Dean of the Faculties of Health Sciences and Medicine at Columbia University complaining that Dr. Mehmet Oz shouldn't be faculty at Columbia University because of his "disdain for science and for evidence-based medicine, as well as baseless and relentless opposition to the genetic engineering of food crops" and "an egregious lack of integrity by promoting quack treatments…
oracknows | April 22, 2015So busy was I writing about America's quack Dr. Mehmet Oz and, of course, the FDA hearing on regulating homeopathy that I didn't take note of a story that came out the other day examining a study looking at the association between MMR vaccination and autism. More correctly, the study examines the lack of association between MMR and autism because that's what every well-designed study that's looked for such an association has found, a lack of association, as I've blogged about more times than I can remember over the last decade. Heck, there's already been one study like this so far in 2015.
Of…
oracknows | April 21, 2015Well, it's over.
I'm referring to the two day hearing held by the FDA in Bethesda seeking public comment regarding how it should modernize its regulation of homeopathic products. Actually, as I discussed before (as did Jann Bellamy over at my favorite other blog, Science-Based Medicine), in fact it's arguable wither there is currently much, if any, actual regulation of homeopathic remedies. Oh, sure, sometimes when a foolish company or true believer tries to market something as unremittingly dangerous as a homeopathic asthma nasal spray, the FDA takes notices. However, for the most part, the…
oracknows | April 21, 2015It would appear that some people got the impression that, just because I questioned whether a recent publicity stunt in which ten doctors and researchers, led by a well-known pro-GMO activist working for the Hoover Institution, Dr. Henry Miller, sent a letter to the dean at Columbia University in essence asking him to fire Oz for his promotion of quackery and, pointedly, anti-GMO fear mongering on his show was a good idea, somehow I'm going easy on Dr. Oz. Not at all. Miller and his compatriots at the Hoover Institution and the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH) made what I see as…
oracknows | April 19, 2015I didn't think I would be writing about this, but, then again, I seem to say that fairly frequently. Be that as it may, on Friday I wrote about a letter sent to Lee Goldman, MD, the Dean of the Faculties of Health Sciences and Medicine at Columbia University complaining about Dr. Mehmet Oz's promotion of pseudoscience on his television show, which reaches millions. When I wrote my post, my first reaction was somewhat supportive, but with reservations. However, as I read your comments and thought about it some more, I started having second thoughts. Then, over the weekend, I had a rather…
oracknows | April 17, 2015If there's one doctor who irritates me possibly more than any other, it's got to be "America's Doctor," a.k.a. Dr. Mehmet Oz, thanks to The Dr. Oz Show. He's been an all too frequent topic on this blog and at my not-so-super-secret other blog. Of course, I refer to him as "America's quack," because, well, that's what he is. Ever since Oprah Winfrey found him and elevated him from a promising young academic cardiothoracic surgeon with a penchant for woo to America's quack, I've been pointing out how much dubious medicine and outright quackery he's been pushing, including homeopathy, faith…
oracknows | April 3, 2015Why, oh why, did I look at GreenMedInfo again?
You remember GreenMedInfo? It's yet another wretched hive of scum and quackery, but with a twist. Its proprietor, Sayer Ji, thinks he's an expert at interpreting the biomedical literature. Unfortunately, as he demonstrates time and time again with depressing regularity, he is nothing of the sort. In reality, what Ji is an expert at is cherry picking medical studies and torturing them until they confess agreement with whatever quack idea he's currently espousing. In the wake of the news coverage of Angelina Jolie's decision to have her ovaries…
oracknows | March 26, 2015I happen to be in Houston right now attending the Society of Surgical Oncology annual meeting. Sadly, I'm only about 12 miles away from the lair of everybody's favorite faux clinical researcher and purveyor of a cancer cure that isn't, Stanislaw Burzynski. Such is life. In any case, this conference is all about cancer and how we treat it surgically. That includes prophylactic surgery designed to prevent cancer in people at very high risk. Prophylactic surgery to prevent cancer is never a decision that should be undertaken lightly and almost never is, rants from quacks notwithstanding that…
oracknows | March 10, 2015Anyone who's read this blog knows my opinion of Mike Adams, the proprietor of the quack website known as NaturalNews.com. It is not favorable, to put it mildly. All you have to do to realize that is to type his name into the search box of this blog and see what comes up: Anger at his attacks on celebrities who have died of cancer; mockery of his pretending to be a scientist and attacking Jimmy Kimmel for "hate speech" about vaccines; alarm at his threats delivered with somewhat plausible deniability against scientists; further alarm at his "natural biopreparedness" and homeopathy for Ebola;…
oracknows | February 27, 2015Two months ago, I took note of a somewhat cryptic blog post by a young woman named Jess Ainscough. In Australia and much of the world, Ainscough was known as the Wellness Warrior. She was a young woman who developed an epithelioid sarcoma in 2008 and ended up choosing "natural healing" to treat her cancer. Among the "natural healing" modalities touted by the Wellness Warrior included that quackery of quackeries, the Gerson protocol, complete with coffee enemas and everything. She even did videos explaining how to administer coffee enemas and posted them on YouTube, although that video is now…
oracknows | February 25, 2015Every so often, it's good to post some heartening news regarding quackery. After all, after a decade of blogging about this, preceded by five years in the trenches of Usenet battling quackery and Holocaust denial, sometimes it's hard for me not to become depressed. After all, there are times when it really does feel as though we're fighting a hopeless battle for rationality and science against unreason and harmful quackery. It's a battle worth fighting, but I'm not laboring under any delusions that it will be won in my life time or even in the lifetimes of anyone currently alive. The various…
oracknows | February 22, 2015Oh, goody. Here's something we didn't need here in the US. While Australian skeptics have successfully been rallying to put a stop to a series of lectures from American antivaccine activist Sherri Tenpenny, we're going to have to put up with a far bigger name in quackery showing up right here in the good ol' U. S. of A. I'm referring to His Royal Highness, the Quacktitioner Royal, Prince Charles, the next King of England. Yes, in March he and Camilla will be here on a four day tour that will include a trip to Louisville to give the keynote address to a symposium on health and nature on March…
oracknows | February 13, 2015If there's one good thing about the ongoing Disneyland measles outbreak that is continuing to spread, if there can be a "good thing" about an outbreak of vaccine-preventable disease that didn't have to happen, it's that it's put the antivaccine movement on the defensive. They are definitely feeling the heat. Their reaction to that heat can range from ever more vigorously proclaiming that they are "not antivaccine" in a desperate bid to convince the unwary and those not familiar with the antivaccine movement that they are not antivaccine, all the while softening their antivaccine tropes…
oracknows | February 12, 2015
It's been a while since I've taken notice of Vani Hari, a.k.a. The Food Babe, the misguided "food safety" activist who sees chemicals, chemicals, chemicals everywhere and raises fears about them all, especially the ones that she can't pronounce. The first time I took any significant notice of her was about a year ago, when she was making news for lobbying Subway to remove the "yoga mat chemical" azodicarbonamide from its bread. Of course, as I explained, azodicarbonamide is a safe chemical that disappears during the baking. It's a maturing agent that makes bread dough rise better and…
oracknows | February 11, 2015
I think we've spent enough time on Bill Maher's antivaccine posturing for now. There really isn't much more to say for now. I'm sure he'll probably dump some pseudoscientific nonsense about medicine on his show to provide me with more blogging material. Today, I'm moved to revisit a certain cancer quack whose offenses are threatening to suck me into devoting as much attention to him in the coming days as I have over the last three years to Stanislaw Burzynski. I'm referring, of couse, to Brian Clement, the proprietor of the Hippocrates Health Institute in Florida.
I first encountered Clement…
oracknows | February 10, 2015Sometimes, in order to understand advocates of pseudoscience, such as antivaccinationists, it's a useful exercise to look at their most extreme elements. Admittedly, in focusing on such loons, one does take the risk of generalizing the nuts to everyone a bit much, but on the other hand I've often found that the extremists are basically like the less loony versions on steroids. The advantage, to me, is that they are unconcerned (for the most part) with hiding the craziness at the root of their beliefs. While, for instance, SafeMinds of the merry band of antivaccinationists at Age of Autism (…
oracknows | February 8, 2015
Note added 2/10/2015: I've posted a followup in response to the skeptics who defend Bill Maher.
A couple of weeks ago, I noted the return of the antivaccine wingnut side of Bill Maher, after a (relative) absence of several years, dating back, most likely, to the thorough spanking he endured for spouting off his antivaccine pseudoscience during the H1N1 pandemic. This well-deserved mockery included Bob Costas taunting him on his own show with a sarcastic, "Oh, come on, Superman!" in response to his apparent belief that diet and lifestyle alone would protect him from the flu, as well as Chris…