Healing fools. The seemingly miraculous ability of our bodies to naturally fight and recover from illness, and our inquisitive brains that are eager to seek out causative patterns in all things, means that we all too readily attribute our healing moments to whatever magic beans we were rubbing at the time. Some are so impressed by their own healing stories that they start to make businesses selecting the appropriate beans [read more…]
On the eve of the Society of Homeopaths’ symposium in London on homeopathy and AIDS, the SoH issue a press release. It is a statement about how they are warm and cuddly and complementary and working oh so hard to dominate create a single register of homeopaths. They are definitely not promoting quack cures for AIDS. It is well documented now about how so many of their press releases are [read more…]
The Daily Mail have re-printed the Guardian’s homeopathic spat between Jeanette Winterson and Ben Goldacre. Both articles (trimmed down) are now head-to-head. But not all is at it seams. I have done some photo analysis on the pictures on that page and uncovered a disturbing truth. Look at the picture below. After some photo manipulation I have been able to reveal this… Look at the picture close up. Who do [read more…]
Yesterday, prize winning author, Jeanette Winterson, delivered a devastating blow to supporters of homeopathy by calling for ‘better regulation’ of the profession and for the Society of Homeopaths to ‘engage with its critics’. In vindication of this web site’s stance, and in recognition of recent futile and aggressive attacks by the Society, the writer slated the current leadership of the profession and said ‘there will always be rogue homeopaths and [read more…]
Last June, I wrote about emerging company, Exradia, and their attempts to sell a magic mobile phone battery to the major handset manufacturers, such as Nokia and Sony Ericsson. Their replacement batteries are supposed to offer health benefits to their owners by jiggling around with the electrical currents in the battery. (Don’t ask me – it’s their theory.) What was shocking about Exradia was they were not your usual flaky [read more…]
I have added new analytical debunking capability to the quackometer by employing the subtle subversive humour of the lolcats. For each of the current top 10 web sites that you have been testing with the quackometer, I am providing a link to a lolcats version of the web site. For example, take this site (Lilias Curtin: body detoxification), and it gets turned into this, As you can plainly see, after [read more…]
Radio 4’s You and Yours programme has been running a series on Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/ME. Today saw the last in the series and concentrated on ‘alternative treatments’ for patients who do not get ‘satisfaction’ from their GP. ME is a quack’s dream. It does not have a specific set of diagnostic criteria – it is what left when all other possibilities have been ruled out – follows a cyclical pattern [read more…]
Put down your sweaty iPod Touch and slide your fingers over the downy back of the Quackometer as it makes its debut in the funky new world of podcasting. Yes, I am the guest this week on the Guardian Science Weekly Podcast, and we discuss the language of quackery. My warm-up and support act is some Canadian academic chappie by the name of Steven Pinker. He sounds quite clever but [read more…]
I am officially bored by the Society of Homeopaths. But just when I thought it could not get worse, that cheeky monkey Gimpy just had to keep digging. On his blog, Gimpy summarized his investigations into Ralf Jeutter, a Director of the Society of Homeopaths, who is offering homeopathic immunisation on his website against dangerous travellers’ diseases, including cholera, malaria, yellow fever, tetanus and typhoid. He also, rather disgustingly, offers [read more…]
I doubt we will ever see an X-Factor moment where a homeopath is forced to brutally confront the totality of their own delusions as they are exposed to a direct and uncompromising truth assault by a quackbusting Simon Cowell. Their emotional commitment to their healing fantasies is far stronger than their intellectual commitment to reason, truth and evidence. But I would have hoped that a homeopath’s disregard for truth was [read more…]
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