Category: Pseudoscience & Quackery

The dark and dangerous side of the New Age nonsense: people who tout unproven, unsupported processes and products allegedly for healing, but often dangerous and even fatal. When fancy talk is used to fake science to the uninitiated and unsupported claims are made for studies and research that was not done properly or sometimes not done at all.

The Food Babe and other nonsense

Critical Thinking / New Age Codswallop / Pseudoscience & Quackery18 Comments

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She’s been called the “Jenny McCarthy of food.” That’s not a compliment and should warn anyone with half a brain to beware of her. She’s a New Age wingnut helping turn the public from science to superstition. She’s also been described as the “latest quack making a name for herself on the Internet by peddling pseudoscience” and a “meme terrorist.” Meet “Food babe” Vani Hari. The latest darling of an increasingly lame and ill-educated national media that focuses on spectacle and controversy. She’s an attention-seeker who … click below for more ↓

Talking to water, yelling at rice

Balderdash & Hoaxes / Critical Thinking / New Age Codswallop / Pseudoscience & Quackery4 Comments

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Dr. Masaru Emoto thinks you can hurt water’s feelings by shouting at it. No, really. Stop laughing. He’s written a bestselling book about it – The Hidden Messages in Water – and he’s convinced a whole lot of people that he’s right. But of course, the sheer numbers of believers doesn’t mean he is. Dr. Emoto has a degree in “alternative medicine”* from the Open University of Mumbai. According to CSICOP, “the only requirement for this degree are one year of study and completion of one … click below for more ↓

Is silver safe as a medicine?

Critical Thinking / Health & Medicine / Pseudoscience & QuackeryOne Comment

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The short answer to that headline question – based on everything I’ve read of late – is no. It’s not that silver has no medical uses – one form has been used in dressings and bandages as an antiseptic (not, as is sometimes claimed, an antibiotic). Silver nitrate is sometimes used to treat warts and corns. However, the benefits and long-term risks of silver in any form – especially an ingested form – have been not been fully researched. It’s not that colloidal silver – an entirely different … click below for more ↓

Sometimes Our Opinions Just Don’t Matter

Conspiracy Theories / Critical Thinking / Pseudoscience & QuackeryLeave a comment

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The headline for this piece comes from a recent article in Time Magazine: “Dear CNN: Sometimes Our Opinions Just Don’t Matter.” The article isn’t – as you might have thought – about local bloggers. It’s about critical thinking. Or rather, the lack of it, on CNN’s part.The lack of it on the part of local bloggers I’ll save for another day. CNN has been running almost non-stop coverage of the plane’s disappearance, repeating in endless loops the same, paltry information they have, then trying to … click below for more ↓

The dangerous idiocy of the anti-vax movement

Conspiracy Theories / Critical Thinking / Pseudoscience & Quackery / Science & Technology2 Comments

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Measles is on the rise in Canada. There have already been many cases in 2014: in PEI, London, Ottawa, southern Alberta, Regina, Qu’Apelle, Calgary, Fraser Valley (320 cases), Hamilton, Halton, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Waterloo, Nanaimo and other locations. Eleven cases in Ontario this year alone. Nine in Alberta. That ancient, deadly foe we recently believed we had conquered, is coming back. And it’s going to kill children again, this time with the complicity of their parents. Fifty years ago, science found the cure and made a … click below for more ↓

Is this the end of the gluten-free fad?

Bread & Baking / Critical Thinking / Food & Drink / Pseudoscience & Quackery4 Comments

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  Last November, when I first wrote about the gluten-free diet fad, I bemoaned how an everyday protein, a staple in human diets for many millennia, had become demonized by the diet fad crowd. In fact, the gluten-free fad rapidly grew into a multi-million-dollar industry in Canada to accommodate that vulnerable intersection of consumer fears and gullibility.* Back when I was writing my piece, the National Post had a piece that indicated while nine million Canadians were allegedly on a gluten-free diet or avoided gluten for … click below for more ↓

Debunking the Adam Bridge

Balderdash & Hoaxes / Conspiracy Theories / Critical Thinking / Pseudoscience & Quackery6 Comments

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    A story popped up on the internet in late 2013, recycled in early 2014, claiming “NASA Images Find 1.7 Million Year Old Man-Made Bridge.” Claptrap. It’s not a bridge. It’s simply a natural tombolo: “a deposition landform in which an island is attached to the mainland by a narrow piece of land such as a spit or bar.” The conspiracy theorists and some religious fundamentalists disagree. It’s been called the Adam bridge, the Rama, Sethu (also Rama Setu – setu is Sanskrit for … click below for more ↓

Psychics 2013: the silly, the scams, the failed predictions

Atheism & Spirituality / Balderdash & Hoaxes / Media Issues / Pets & Animal Behaviour / Pseudoscience & Quackery / Social Order & DisorderOne Comment

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Action News, an ABC affiliate, ran a late-year story with the headline “Psychics interpret pets’ thoughts.” No, it’s not April Fools’ Day: this was December 26. Yet the reporter treated it seriously; just like it was a real story; actual news, rather than a steaming heap of superstitious dung. That reporters for any media outlet treat would such codswallop as “news” calls into question their ability, their competence and their education. Lorrie The Pet Psychic has been tuning into the thoughts of animals for 18 … click below for more ↓

American belief in evolution is growing: poll

Atheism & Spirituality / Balderdash & Hoaxes / Evolution & Paleontology / Faith / Pseudoscience & Quackery / Religion / Science & Technology / Social Order & DisorderLeave a comment

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A new Harris poll released this month shows that Americans apparently are losing their belief in miracles and gaining it in science. The recent poll showed that American belief in evolution had risen to 47% from its previous poll level of 42%, in 2005. True, it’s not an overwhelming increase, and it’s still less than half the population, but it is an improvement. Belief in creationism dropped 3% during that time, to 36%. Good news, of course, but don’t break out the champagne yet. There’s other … click below for more ↓

Pyramids in the Ice: Hoax

Balderdash & Hoaxes / Conspiracy Theories / Memes; Internet & Social / Pseudoscience & QuackeryOne Comment

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What is it about pyramids that excites the imagination? Their shape? Their size? Height? Age? The complexities and difficulties in their building? Or the sheer grandeur of them? And what is it about them that get the cranks and conspiracy theorists so fired up? What is it about these  constructions that convince some folks they’re made by – or for – aliens? Or that there’s some bizarre coverup by governments to keep people from knowing the “truth” about them? This week I noticed some odd … click below for more ↓

Why Creationists Don’t Win the Nobel Prize

Atheism & Spirituality / Critical Thinking / Pseudoscience & Quackery / Science & TechnologyLeave a comment

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Looking at the list of Nobel prizes awarded in 2013 for science, we see three prestigious entries: The Nobel Prize in Physics 2013 François Englert and Peter W. Higgs “For the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider.” The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2013 Martin Karplus, Michael Levitt and Arieh … click below for more ↓

Why do so few Canadians get a flu shot?

Balderdash & Hoaxes / Conspiracy Theories / Internet & Social Media / Pseudoscience & Quackery / Science & TechnologyLeave a comment

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That’s the headline for a recent Toronto Star story. It suggests that as few as one third of Canadians get a flu vaccine, and in some place the number may be as low as 20 percent. This despite Ontario having the world’s first universal free flu shot program, introduced in 2000. The 2013-14 vaccine is on its way to doctors’ offices now. It’s also available at pharmacists’ offices. It’s free, easily accessible, it prevents and helps stop the spread of many kinds of influenza, it … click below for more ↓

Internet Surveys: Bad Data, Bad Science and Big Bias

Balderdash & Hoaxes / Critical Thinking / Politics / Provincial Politics / Pseudoscience & Quackery / Science & Technology / Social Order & Disorder / US Politics5 Comments

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Back in 2012, I wrote a blog piece about internet polls and surveys, asking whether internet polls and surveys could be – or should be – considered valid or scientific. I concluded, after researching the question, that, since the vast majority lack any scientific basis and are created by amateurs – often with a goal to direct rather than measure public opinion – that, Most internet polls are merely for entertainment purposes. They harmlessly allow us to believe we are being engaged and are participating … click below for more ↓

Quackery and Big Bucks Infect Health Canada

Balderdash & Hoaxes / Canadian Politics / Critical Thinking / Pseudoscience & Quackery / Science & TechnologyLeave a comment

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Health Canada has allowed an increasing number of useless “alternative” healthcare (alternative TO healthcare in most cases) products to be sold in Canada over the last decade, despite the lack of proper (or in some cases, any) research data to prove their claims, effectiveness or safety. Most recently, however, Health Canada went further into pseudoscience and licensed homeopathic vaccines, proving that the agency has bowed to corporate pressure and given up trying to protect Canadian health. According to the BC Medical Journal, “…Health Canada has … click below for more ↓

Speaking with the dead

Atheism & Spirituality / Balderdash & Hoaxes / Memes; Internet & Social / Pseudoscience & Quackery / Science & TechnologyLeave a comment

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Can the dead speak to us from beyond the grave? No, of course not. But that doesn’t stop literally millions of superstitious people from believing they do. And some think they can use technology to facilitate the conversation. Of course, when you put technology into the mix, it simply cements the belief in place, no matter how ludicrous. And the internet has provided a platform for this silliness to reach worldwide. A recent post on the BBC website made me do some investigation. The BBC story … click below for more ↓

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