snake oil
grrlscientist | January 17, 2010tags: Dragons Den, Bruce's Juice, television, snake oil, cure-all, WTF, broken dreams, streaming video
Ultra-pure water with silver in it is a cure-all? Um, I've never watched Dragons Den and if this is an example of the sleaze they feature on it, then I never want to. How cruel is it to raise someone's hopes and dreams only to have her lose everything, including her life?
"Bruce, I don't think you're crazy, but you disgust me" Robert opines.
H/T: more friend and colleague, Cath Ennis.
awild | May 13, 2009One of the most vociferous debates in taxonomy is over a catchy-sounding concept called DNA barcoding. Since nearly all organisms carry a version of the COI gene in the mitochondrion, the idea is that the DNA sequence of the gene can serve as a standard identification marker. A barcode, of sorts. Of course, the practice only works if species have unique COI sequences. Which they do, much of the time, and the barcoders consequently have been successful in garnering research money and churning out publications.
So what's the problem?
There are two major objections. The first is…
retrospectacle | October 14, 2007There's a new viral film breezing through the internet, demonstrating what appears to be a way to make ordinary soda glow. Only one problem, its a big fake.
The video claims that just adding baking soda and some hydrogen peroxide to Mountain Dew will result in the over-caffinated beverage achieving an eerie glow. However, closely watching the video, which is available on YouTube, shows that in addition to these ingredients, theres another item added to the Dew-- the contents of a glowstick. The glow fluid goes into the soda, using sleight of hand, and the hydrogen peroxide activates the…
retrospectacle | October 9, 2007[This is part of a series I'm doing here on Retrospectacle called 'Science Vault.' Pretty much I'm just going to dig back into the forgotten and moldering annuls of scientific publications to find weird and interesting studies that very likely would never be published or done today (and perhaps never should have.) I'll probably try to do it once a week (and if you have suggestions, please do email me with them.)]
Its been a few weeks since anything truly old and shocking as come across my plate as fodder for my 'Science Vault' series, but when I saw this paper, I knew I had to blog it.…
retrospectacle | August 23, 2006Orac of Respectful Insolence is on vacation this week, and in the hiatus is posting some "classic" Insolence from the old blog. In his absence, I feel the need to continue the fight against woo (and also, I happened to receive this story via email---Hat tip Darkman).
The 35-year-old high school teacher named Bheki was lucky to be alive, thanks to the free antiretroviral pills that kept his HIV in check. He felt strong and had no side effects. Life was normal, as normal as it gets with an incurable disease.
Then in February, he ditched the pills and started taking a mystery potion sold here…
retrospectacle | July 31, 2006Almost as inevitable as evolution is the law that states, where there are stupid naive people, there will be someone to hustle them.
People were persuaded to buy a powder which they could allegedly turn into "Magic Cheese", said to make skin look younger and to be highly valuable.
The powder, called Yo Flex and costing up to $500 (£270), turned out to be an almost-worthless food supplement.
More than 20,000 Peruvians and 6,000 Chileans were reportedly duped.
Now, as if that wasn't crazy enough, it gets weirder.
According to reports, victims of the scam believed they only had to mix the…