scams
oracknows | March 3, 2016Well, I'm here.
Yes, last night I arrived in Boston for the Society of Surgical Oncology meeting down at the convention center. For any skeptics who might be so inclined the Boston Skeptics are planning a meetup on Saturday, details firming up. No talk this time, but at least we can hang out for a while. There probably won't be too much drinking on my part, either, because I'll be flying home Sunday morning, and flying with a hangover is not a good thing. How do I know this? Don't ask. I am, however, happy not to be in Detroit tonight, given that the Republican debate will be occurring mere…
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;…
tsmith | November 1, 2014I've been asked several times about this NY Post article on the CDC's "admission" that a sneeze could spread Ebola. The Post (which, I should note, is the least credible newspaper in New York City, for those not familiar with the paper) suggests that the CDC has changed their tune regarding the spread of Ebola.
Except, they haven't, and this is a ridiculous, trumped-up non-story, passed along not only by the Post but by others of the typical suspects like conspiracy theorist extraordinaire Mike Adams, aka "The Health Ranger" of Natural News.
Here's what the NY Post claims:
“Droplet spread…
aardvarchaeology | January 11, 2013Two years ago I was dismayed to find that a pair of crank authors had managed to slip a pseudo-archaeological paper into a respected geography journal. Last spring they seemed to have pulled off the same trick again, this time with an astronomy journal. Pseudoscience is after all a smelly next-door neighbour of interdisciplinary science.* When I realised that the second paper was in a bogus Open Access journal, I drew the conclusion that the authors had fallen for a scam, paying the OA fee to get published in a journal whose academic standing they had severely misjudged. That's still my…
oracknows | January 1, 2013That Dr. Mehmet Oz uses his show to promote quackery of the vilest sort is no longer in any doubt. I was reminded yet again of this last week when I caught a rerun of one of his shows from earlier this season, when he gazed in wonder at the tired old cold reading schtick used by all "psychic mediums" from time immemorial, long before the current crop of celebrity psychic mediums, such as John Edward, Sylvia Browne, and the "Long Island Medium" Theresa Caputo, discovered how much fame and fortune they could accrue by scamming the current generation of the credulous. Speaking of Theresa Caputo…