Woo

Orac Note: While Orac is on vacation, he's reprinting some of his "classics" (if you can call them that). He's also trying (but not always succeeding) to pick posts that have never been "rerun" before. (Orac has his favorites, and every few years when he's on vacation he can't resist rerunning them.) In any case, I used to run a feature called "Your Friday Dose of Woo." Basically, it was designed to feature the most spectacularly ridiculous pseudoscience and quackery I could find. It ran for two or three years, pretty much every Friday, until I got tired of being boxed in having to find…
Thinker, writer, and independent scholar Shawn Otto has written an important book called “The War on Science: Who’s Waging It, Why It Matters, What We Can Do About It” (Milkweed Editions, publisher) Read this book now, and act on what you learn from it, for the sake of your own future and the future of our children and their children. The rise of modern civilization, from the Enlightenment onward for hundreds of years, was the same thing as the rise of modern science. The rise of science was a cultural novelty with only vague foreshadowing. It was a revolution in the way humans think.…
I'm on my way to a taping of the Humanist Views with Host Scott Lohman. I do these now and then and have done so since I first moved to Minnesota back when it was still cold here. We'll be talking about science knowledge, and why basic science knowledge is important. We'll also be talking about how to go about evaluating science stories you encounter in the news, or more likely, on your Facebook feed or in other social media. Pursuant to this, I wrote a blog post that talks about how science stories go out to the general public. I also report on a request I sent out a few days ago to my…
I've been at this skeptical blogging thing for over a decade now. I realize that I periodically remind you, my readers, of this and that perhaps I do it too often, but my reminders generally serve a purpose. Specifically, they serve to put an exclamation point on my surprise when I discover a new purveyor of pseudoscience and/or quackery that I had never heard of before but who is apparently fairly well known in the quackosphere. Such is what happened this week, when I learned of a man who appears to be challenging Deepak Chopra and Bruce Lipton for the title of most annoying mystical quack…
You may know the blog What's Up With That. It is Anthony Watt's anti-science blog, dedicated to climate change denialism. A current post reports the finding of life forms from another planet, in a meteorite. This looks to be a huge story, the first evidence of extraterrestrial life, if it holds up.... This is from a recent meteorite find in December 2012. A large fire ball was seen by a large number of people in Sri Lanka on December 29th 2012, during that episode a large meteorite disintegrated and fell to Earth in the village of Araganwila which is few miles away from the city of…
There has been concern over the safety of Gardasil (and other?) HPV vaccines. This concern emanates from the usual Anti-Vax sources. The Anti-Vax people are wrong, often to the point where we have to regard them as delusional, about everything they say. If you find yourself leaning towards thinking that they have a point, you need to check yourself because they don't. There are good reasons why parents worry about vaccines (see "The vaccination does make the baby cry, so why do it?"), but in the final analysis (or even way before the final analysis) these worries are falsehoods. I would…
Animals serve as useful models in medical research—but they also serve as models for our anthropocentric fantasies. On Life Lines, Dr. Dolittle reports that researchers were able to "restore locomotion in paralyzed rats using a combination of nerve stimulation and engaging the mind by having the rats complete simple tasks." The rats, outfitted with a "support jacket" to provide external stimulation, learned to walk and even sprint to their favorite snack. Dr. Dolittle writes "the nerves had actually reorganized to create new connections around the injury site" and "these new research findings…
Day and night, the sun is something most of us take for granted. But on Respectful Insolence, disciples stare at it intently in order to gain its energy. Orac writes "sun gazers seem to think that mammals are like plants in possessing an ability to absorb energy directly from the sun"—and diehard gurus claim to have lived for years without food or water. Earnest practitioners risk blindness, dehydration, starvation and death. Orac says "Sun gazing also leaves out the fact that plants get the organic building blocks they use to produce their actual structures from the ground in which they grow…
The British Medical Journal has published an editorial calling for a Parliamentary investigation realted to Andrew Wakefield's dishonesty: It is now more than 18 months since the UK's General Medical Council found Andrew Wakefield guilty of dishonesty and other serious professional misconduct; and it is nearly a year since the BMJ concluded that his now retracted Lancet paper linking the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine with autism and bowel disease was an "elaborate fraud." At that time, January 2011, we called on Wakefield's former employer, University College London (UCL), to…
You must go read the chilling and amusing account of Jamie Bernstein and Ken Reibel's visit to the AutismOne Conference in the Chicago area. The story has all the elements. Horror: (that's what they were forced to eat); Police Absurdity (though not brutality); Screeching Breathless Paranoia; Jenny McCarthy; and Chemical Castration. The story is told by Jamie across two blogs: Autism One, Part One on Skepchick and How I Got Kicked Out of the AutismOne Con: Part 2 on Friendly Atheist. Ken Reibel gives his version of the events here.
It seems like every time I take Huxley (now 18 months old) to the doctor, the following things happen: 1) Somebody says "Well, he won't need to get stuck with any needles for a long while now .... his next scheduled immunization is [insert phrase indicating 'a long time into the future']"; and 2) Huxley gets stuck with some needles. The last time, a few days ago, was especially bad. We hung around in the exam room for a while, and Huxley was in a very happy mood. He learned to say "Elmo" and how to point to the "Otoscope" when asked. The doctor, having recently had a baby of her own,…
Although it is illegal to sell in most states, raw milk is gaining popularity as claims about its healthfulness multiply. Proponents of raw say the heat of pasteurization destroys beneficial enzymes and probiotic bacteria, while homogenization damages the natural structure of milk. Sharon Astyk drinks raw milk on Casaubon's Book, but only from animals she raises herself. She says raw milk "tastes better," "is easier to digest," and "should be available for sale everywhere." But she also acknowledges the inherent bacterial risks of rawness, warning that it is not for everyone and requires…
The Wall Street Journal's Matthew Dalton reports: European scientific authorities Thursday rejected dozens of health claims made by food companies, in a sign of how tricky it will be for them to get some of their most popular claims past a European Union drive to bring scientific rigor to the health foods. A panel of the European Food Safety Authority issued nearly a hundred opinions on health claims, about two-thirds of which were negative. The rejections included claims on special bacteria that are supposed to aid digestion and boost the immune system, beta carotene additives for sunscreen…
The anti-vaccine movement has infiltrated society so thoroughly that correcting the trend of misinformation might verge on the impossible, argues Liza Gross in a PLoS Biology paper published last Tuesday. The public's lack of trust in the authority and motivations of doctors and of governmental health organizations is one factor cited in the article, as well as the frequent media portrayal of the vaccine-antivaccine debate as a balanced fight. ScienceBloggers Janet Stemwedel, Orac, and Peter Lipson weighed in on two questions raised by the paper and the responses it garnered—as Janet asks, "…
The billionaire media icon Oprah Winfrey sealed a contractual deal with notorious anti-vaccination supporter Jenny McCarthy Monday that will enable McCarthy to spread her belief that vaccines cause autism across several platforms. This viewpoint is vehemently opposed in the scientific community, as it remains virtually unsupported after years of rigorous scientific investigation and, if heeded as true, has lethal consequences in the form of diseases like measles, mumps and rubella. With support from Oprah, McCarthy is slated to host a syndicated talk show and maintain a blog. According to…
An investigation by the Sunday Times (UK) indicates that the doctor who reported information suggesting a link between MMR vaccine and autism may have "misreproted results in his research." The investigation purpots to show that ... ...Andrew Wakefield manipulated patients' data, which triggered fears that the MMR triple vaccine to protect against measles, mumps and rubella was linked to the condition. The research [originally] claimed that the families of eight out of 12 children attending a routine clinic at the hospital had blamed MMR for their autism, and said that problems came on…
It seems that a brilliant doctor in the UK has come up with an amazing piece of machinery and convinced a famous author to wear it in order to stave off the onset of Alzheimer's disease. Here's the machinery... looks like a mind control device or something - too bad It's not going to work. According to the news article about this amazing technology: The prototype anti-dementia helmet, which must be worn for ten minutes each day, was designed by British GP Dr Gordon Dougal. It works by directing intense bursts of infrared light into the brain to stimulate the growth of brain cells. Low-level…
Guess what? A natural therapy can cure cancer, but evil doctors don't want to tell you about it, because the medical establishment wants to make money with Mosanto and Dupont rather than cure your illnesses! Watch all about it. Update: Sorry, I missed Orac's successful attack on this thing. Thanks Science Pundit, for pointing it out.
are brought to you by mental floss. HT to Rebecca Tushnet via Frank Pasquale.