A criticism often levied at the quackometer is that it is very broad brush. Fair enough. It is often quite general in what it says, but it is only a bit a web script after all. The quackometer is intended to be a spring board into the exploration of health claims. Improvements in the new year should make this easier. However, the central premise behind the quackometer is that when [read more…]
A regular comment to me is to ask “why have I got it in for Nutritionists?” Surely, these are dedicated health professionals who do wonders for peoples’ health by improving their diets and making sure people take the right supplements, if required. Well maybe. The problem is that so many nutritionists are not doing this and often resort to pseudoscience and quackery. This week’s Quack Word blog entry will argue [read more…]
A big thanks to quackometer correspondent, a broadcaster, journalist and nutritional therapist, Suzi Grant for bringing me to the attention of the wonderful sounding healing technique of Phytobiophysics®. (please don’t sue me…) This is a technique that is being promoted by the Institute of Phytobiophysics which follows the Mossop Philosophy through its products and courses. The Mossop philosophy is supposed to: harnesses the vibration energy of plants to release energy [read more…]
The Quackometer is far from perfect. Sometimes quackery slips though its little webbed feet and I need to update it. Often a story in the paper requires a little more dissection to reveal its inner quackery. So, today we hear that standing in a freezer can improve your health. Daily Mail reporter, Barney Calman, freezes his bits off as a piece of investigative journalism into whole-body cryotherapy. This is a [read more…]
For a while now, the quackometer has been regularly and automatically scanning various blogs for good writing about quackery. The end result is a twice-daily distillation of what’s hot in the blogosphere about quackery -or as the little black duck calls it, the quackoblogosphere. Now, this digest is available as an RSS feed so that you can see who is writing the best stuff in one easy to find location. [read more…]
Le Canard Noir is pleased to announce the arrival of the Quackometer QuackSafeTM Search Engine. Do you quickly need to debunk the latest fraudulent claim? Do you need to see if others have insight into a quack? This is the Search Engine for you. The Search Engine will only return matches from sites and blogs that are known to supply reliable information about quackery, quacks, medical fraud and health realetd [read more…]
At last, what appears to be some reasonable criticism of high street quackery in the Daily Mail… Well, it sort of starts out OK with a report as follows: … according to a report in Psychiatric Bulletin, health shops give out bad advice on depression and they offer a range of useless stuff, including the cruel-sounding cat’s claw, when only one of their products, St John’s Wort, is scientifically proved [read more…]
Le Canard Noir is pleased to announce the arrival of the Quackometer QuackSafeTM Toolbar Button for Internet Explorer that will allow one-click access to the Quackometer and QuackSafeTM Search Engine. Click the button to find out if your current page is Quackery. Highlight a name in the text and click the button to find out if they might be a quack. Type a query into the Google Toolbar search button [read more…]
No, this is not about our Defender of Quackery, our Quack-in-Chief His Royal Quackiness, Prince Charles, but about the Distinguished Provost of the Royal College of Alternative Medicine, Professor Joseph Chikelue Obi. And yes, it is just a rather lame story written solely to get a picture of Kate on my blog. I’ve written a rather lazy blog on the distinguished professor before that was just a bit of a [read more…]
Or ‘How to be debunked by a nine year old schoolgirl’ In the special world of the quack, the crank and the pseudo-scientist the word ‘Energy’ holds the highest place in the league tables of misappropriated and abused language. I often get complaints that the quackometer only spots quacks and lets cranks off the hook. That is deliberate on my part – one thing at a time. The crank is [read more…]
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