Here’s something that I feel passionate about. Le Canard Noir is a diving duck and has just come back from a diving holiday. Most divers I meet have developed a special sense of awareness of the fragility of the underwater environment and many of my scuba friends are involved with conservation projects. We see things non-divers do not: damaged reefs, bleached reefs, discarded nets, rubbish, hooks in fish, and disturbingly, [read more…]
Paul McKenna, hypnotist, has fallen foul of the Advertising Standards Authority by claiming in print that his methods are ” … the most effective weight loss system available. Lose weight and keep it off … “. Today, the ASA upheld a complaint and told him not to repeat this claim as he had failed to produce satisfactory evidence to support his marketing. His claims were unsubstantiated. All this is pretty [read more…]
Poor Patrick Holford. Doing business has its ups and downs and, alternative nutritionist and pill salesman Patrick, has his own fair share of business successes and failures at the moment. He has recently sold himself to NeutraHealth for £464,000. Quite an achievement; maybe not so poor Patrick. But he is also increasing coming under more and more criticism for his ideas on nutrition. A Google search of ‘Patrick Holford’ shows [read more…]
I sometimes get emails from people offended by the quackometer asking me to remove all traces of them from my web site. I usually politely respond by asking exactly what I have written that is wrong and I will be glad to remove it. I never hear back. This week I had an email from Patrick Holford telling me that I should not have posted on Professor David Colquhoun’s blog, [read more…]
You may have noticed on several news sites yesterday that Tangerine peel ‘kills cancer’ as reported by the BBC, the Sun, Sky News and others. Apparently, theBritish Pharmaceutical Conference (BPC) in Manchester has been shown results by a Dr Hoon Tan of the Leicester School of Pharmacy (de Montfort University) that eating fruit peel might kill cancer cells in your body. The Quackometer was jumpy. We have seen how Leicester [read more…]
Amanda Hamilton, the Queen of Detox, is the emerging, good looking face of daytime, lifestyle, detox TV. She is a self described homeopath and expert in nutritional therapy, iridology, yoga and Ayurveda. If we were playing quack bingo, I would be shouting ‘house!’ Amanda has appeared regularly on the BBC, GMTV and UKTV, runs a number of detox spas in Spain and Turkey, writes books and sells home detox kits. [read more…]
There are many laws in the UK that ought to make trading in quackery difficult. In practice though, the laws are often skirted around or side-stepped by careful wording of claims and marketing tactics. Those of us who prefer to pop off a complaint to Trading Standards rather than watch Eastenders find it quite a frustrating business. One of the main problems in the UK is that there is no [read more…]
or, The Curious Case of Patrick Holford’s CV It was funny when ‘Dr’ Gillian McKeith got slapped for using unaccredited qualifications to promote her quackery. However, it is now looking as if Patrick Holford’s CV is far more interesting. Patrick has been criticised for a while now for having no formal qualifications in any nutritional subject. He claims to have a BSc in psychology and his Honorary Diploma in Nutritional [read more…]
After several decades of increasing popularity, the homeopathic community is finding itself under growing pressure. There is an increasing level of criticism of the practice coming from many quarters, including Richard Dawkins recent Channel 4 programme, lots of bloggers and academics too. Importantly, homeopathy is not being seen as as benign as its adherents’ propaganda suggests and that there are real dangers in the belief in magic water and sugar [read more…]
The Internet is a wonderful thing. It allows you check stuff, like the claims of quacks, in a way that was not possible just a few years ago. This blog entry would have taken many months of library work and correspondence without the web and some of its amazing content, and now I can do it between mowing the lawn and popping down the pub for a pint. Dana Ullman [read more…]
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