Pharmacists put themselves at risk by selling homeopathic remedies

I have written about the ethics of pharmacists selling homeopathic preparations pretending they are effective medicines often – not just on this blog, but also in medical journals (see for instance here and here) and in our recent book. So, maybe I should give it a rest? No! I believe that the issue is far […]

Read the rest here: Pharmacists put themselves at risk by selling homeopathic remedies

American Loon #2047: Francis Myles

Now, what the heck is this? Ostensibly, one Francis Myles explains how you achieve “genetic salvation” (if you’re interested, you can go to the video here. “Delusional incoherence” doesn’t even begin to describe the otherworldly gibberish contained therein). The interview in that link was...

Read the full lunacy: #2047: Francis Myles Encyclopedia of American Loons

THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF CHIROPRACTIC’s pathetic attempt at re-inventing chiropractic

The Royal College of Chiropractors (RCC), a Company Limited by guarantee, was given a royal charter in 2013. It has following objectives: to promote the art, science and practice of chiropractic; to improve and maintain standards in the practice of chiropractic for the benefit of the public; to promote awareness and understanding of chiropractic amongst medical […]

Read the rest here: THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF CHIROPRACTIC’s pathetic attempt at re-inventing chiropractic

Kinesiology tape: a triumph of marketing over evidence

I am sure we have all seen these colourful tapes that nowadays decorate the bodies of many of our sporting heroes. The tape is supposed to be good for athletic performance – but not just that, it is also promoted for all sorts of health conditions, for instance, low back pain. But is it worth […]

Read the rest here: Kinesiology tape: a triumph of marketing over evidence

American Loon #2046: Steven Myers

Deranged, home-made theories defended with motivated reasoning by “independent scholars” are a dime a dozen, and the Giza pyramid is a common target. Edward J. Kunkel, for instance, argued – in his book The Pharaoh’s Pump – that the great pyramid in the desert at Giza was a water...

Read the full lunacy: #2046: Steven Myers Encyclopedia of American Loons

Some recommend acupuncture for infant colic, yet the evidence tells us that it ‘should not be recommended’

Needle acupuncture in small children is controversial, not least because the evidence that it works is negative or weak, and because small children are unable to consent to the treatment. Yet it is recommended by some acupuncturists for infant colic. This, of course, begs the questions: Does the best evidence tell us that acupuncture is […]

Read the rest here: Some recommend acupuncture for infant colic, yet the evidence tells us that it ‘should not be recommended’

Yet another confirmation: the effects of acupuncture are due to placebo

Most people probably think of acupuncture as being used mainly as a therapy for pain control. But acupuncture is currently being promoted (and has traditionally been used) for all sorts of conditions. One of them is stroke. It is said to speed up recovery and even improve survival rates after such an event. There are […]

Read the rest here: Yet another confirmation: the effects of acupuncture are due to placebo

My treatment works … Because … my treatment works! A crash-course in logic for alternative practitioners

In the comment section of a recent post, we saw a classic example of the type of reasoning that many alternative practitioners seem to like. In order to offer a service to other practitioners, I will elaborate on it here. The reasoning roughly follows these simple 10 steps: My treatment works. My treatment requires a […]

Read the rest here: My treatment works … Because … my treatment works! A crash-course in logic for alternative practitioners

Homeopathic remedies are inherently harmless! True or false?

“Homeopathic remedies are inherently harmless” this is what many seem to think – homeopathy friends and foes alike. After all, they contain nothing – so, how can it cause harm? The notion is, of course, not entirely true. Homeopathic remedies can be directly harmful, if: they are not highly dilute (low potency) – imagine Arsenic […]

Read the rest here: Homeopathic remedies are inherently harmless! True or false?

PLEASE JOIN ME IN A FUN EXPERIMENT: Let’s design a study that might deceive (almost) everyone

Can I tempt you to run a little (hopefully instructive) thought-experiment with you? It is quite simple: I will tell you about the design of a clinical trial, and you will tell me what the likely outcome of this study would be. Are you game? Here we go: _____________________________________________________________________________ Imagine we conduct a trial of […]

Read the rest here: PLEASE JOIN ME IN A FUN EXPERIMENT: Let’s design a study that might deceive (almost) everyone

2018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #29

Story of the Week... Analysis of the Week... SkS Highlights... El Niño/La Niña Update... Toon of the Week... Quote of the Week... Graphic of the Week... SkS in the News... Photo of the Week... SkS Spotlights... Video of the Week... Reports of Note... Coming Soon on SkS... Poster of the Week... SkS Week in Review...

Story of the Week...

A Global Heat Wave Has Set the Arctic Circle on Fire

Fire burns in Karbole, Sweden. Photo: Mats Andersson/AFP/Getty Images

From Japan to Sweden, and Oman to Texas, a global heat wave is setting records, igniting wildfires, and killing dozens all across the world this week.

The south-central region is home to the highest temperatures in the U.S. this week, with nearly 35 million people living under excessive heat warnings issued by the National Weather Service. Temperatures are expected to be in the triple digits across Texas this weekend, marking the most severe heat wave in the state since 2011.

The Texas heat has already led to record-breaking days for the Texas power grid twice this week. Things aren’t any better elsewhere in the region, with heat indexes in Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana reaching up to 110 degrees.

A Global Heat Wave Has Set the Arctic Circle on Fire by Adam K Raymond, Daily Intelligencer, New York Magazine, July 20, 2018

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Analysis of the Week...

The 5 most important questions about carbon taxes, answered

 

Carbon taxes are in the news these days. In recent months, not one but two conservative national carbon tax proposals have emerged, disrupting the usual partisan dynamic on climate policy.

First there was the proposal from the Climate Leadership Council, a group of (mostly older, retired) Republicans and centrists, which was released last year but recently gained the backing of a new big-money conservative PAC. And next week, Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-FL), co-chair of the House Climate Solutions Caucus, plans to release a carbon-tax proposal of his own.

Neither proposal has a snowflake’s chance in hell of passage any time soon. And on Thursday, the House passed a resolution trying to squash even the possibility of a carbon tax. But the existence of these proposals does indicate a heightened level of awareness of and interest in carbon taxes. So now seems like a good opportunity to review some of the basics.

The 5 most important questions about carbon taxes, answered by David Roberts, Energy & Environment, Vox, July 20, 2018

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Toon of the Week...

 

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Quote of the Week...

“The red alert is on,” Laurent Fabius, who was president of the 2015 international climate change negotiations in Paris, told an audience last week at the EuroScience Open Forum, Europe’s largest interdisciplinary science meeting. As of 2015, global temperatures had risen about 1 degree Celsius above pre-industrial levels. “It’s a race against time,” Fabius said, and the political challenge is to avoid acting too late.

What Climate Change Looks Like In 2018 by Christie Aschwanden, Climate, FiveThirtyEight, July 19, 2018

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SkS in the News...

Carolyn Kormann interviewed John Cook for her New Yorker magazine article, In Andrew Wheeler, Trump Gets a Cannier E.P.A. Chief. Cook's observations are contained in this paragraph:

Wheeler has long been a climate denialist, fighting any policies that would establish mandatory carbon limits. In 2003, in a long speech on the Senate floor opposing a climate bill put forward by Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman, Inhofe famously said that “man-made global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.” Wheeler defended his boss’s position for years, criticizing the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and casting doubt on the science. (In 2006, he said in an interview with E&E News, “The fact is that the climate changes regularly.”) On Friday, however, in an interview with the Washington Post, Wheeler changed his position—or, at least, chose his words carefully. He said that he believes climate change is real and that “people have an impact on the climate.” (During his Senate confirmation hearings for deputy administrator, last November, he expressed more uncertainty. “I believe man has an impact on the climate,” he said. “But what is not completely understood is what the impact is.”) John Cook, a climate-change communications researcher at George Mason University, categorizes this kind of statement as “doubt-mongering misinformation,” Republicans’ latest argument, he told me, to support climate inaction. (Previously, Wheeler and others used the “explicit misinformation” argument, Cook said. “It seems to be on its way out.”) Wheeler now claims, as he told the Post, that he has “always deferred to career scientists,” and will continue to do so. In his first e-mail to E.P.A. employees as acting administrator, last week, he wrote, “I look forward to working alongside all of you to continue our collective goal of protecting public health and the environment.” 

In his New York Times article, He Sues to Discredit Climate Scientists. Now He’s Being Sued by His Allies., John Schwartz wrote:

The efforts by Mr. Schnare and Mr. Horner to obtain climate scientists’ emails followed a trail blazed in 2009 in an episode known as Climategate, when hackers exposed a trove of private messages between scientists. Global warming denialists took the blunt discussions out of context to allege that researchers had tampered with data, but subsequent investigations found no evidence of fraud.

The first link in the above is to the Basic version of the SkS rebuttal article, Clearing up misconceptions regarding 'hide the decline' 

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Reports of Note...

Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage Approaches for Carbon Dioxide Removal and Reliable Sequestration: Proceedings of a Workshop in Brief

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Coming Soon on SkS...

• Scientists detect a human fingerprint in the warming of the atmosphere (John Abraham)
• Wind Energy: What About Those Subsidies? And, the Key Advantage over Natural Gas (greenman)
• Facebook video spreads climate denial misinformation to 5 million users (Dana)
• CSLDF is fighting attacks on science. Here’s how you can help (Lauren Kurtz)
• Permafrost and wetland emissions could cut 1.5C carbon budget ‘by five years’ (Robert McSweeney)
• 2018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #30 (John Hartz)
• 2018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #30 (John Hartz)

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Poster of the Week...

 

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SkS Week in Review... 

• 2018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #29 by John Hartz
• 97% of House Republicans foolishly reject carbon taxes by Dana Nuccitelli (Climate Consensus - the 97%, Environment, Guardian)
• Ocean Temperature - Part 2 by Irek Zawadzki
• How Wind Turbines Bolster Rural America by greenman360 (Climate Denial Crock of the Week with Peter Sinclair)
• SkS Analogy 13 - Water glasses and Greenhouse gases by evan & jg
• Comprehensive study: carbon taxes won't hamper the economy by Dana Nuccitelli (Climate Consensus - the 97%, Environment, Guardian)
• 2018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #28 by John Hartz

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American Loon #2045: Ned Myers

Not really sure who Ned Myers is, but he is definitely a creationist, and at one point got the opportunity to lay out his delusions about science in a column in the (now defunct?) Daily News Journal. In the column, Myers was concerned that in 2011 “American public school students place 23rd in...

Read the full lunacy: #2045: Ned Myers Encyclopedia of American Loons

Andrew Wakefield, Donald Trump, SCAM, and the anti-vaccination cult

The fact that many SCAM-practitioners are latent or even overt anti-vaxxers has often been addressed on this blog. The fact that the anti-vaccination guru, Andrew Wakefield, has his fingers deep in the SCAM-pie is less well appreciated. In case you forgot who Wakefield is, let me remind you. As a gastroenterologist at the London Royal […]

Read the rest here: Andrew Wakefield, Donald Trump, SCAM, and the anti-vaccination cult

More evidence that the use of SCAM shortens the life of cancer patients

We Have previously seen that SCAM use can shorten the lives of cancer patients. A new article now confirms this notion. The investigators wanted to find out what patient characteristics are associated with use of SCAM for cancer and what is the association of SCAM with treatment adherence and survival. They thus  compared the overall […]

Read the rest here: More evidence that the use of SCAM shortens the life of cancer patients

“Non-reproducible single occurrences are of no significance to science”. The example of the homeopathic diarrhoea trials

“Non-reproducible single occurrences are of no significance to science”, this quote by Karl Popper often seems to get forgotten in medicine, particularly in alternative medicine. It indicates that findings have to be reproducible to be meaningful – if not, we cannot be sure that the outcome in question was caused by the treatment we applied. […]

Read the rest here: “Non-reproducible single occurrences are of no significance to science”. The example of the homeopathic diarrhoea trials

American Loon #2044: Amy Myers

Amy Myers has, over the course of recent years, risen to become something resembling a bigshot in the worthless-supplement industry, with a brand that promises to sell nonsense for often vaguely defined conditions. Now, Myers is, indeed, an MD, but she markets herself as a functional...

Read the full lunacy: #2044: Amy Myers Encyclopedia of American Loons

Random thoughts on meditation

Having yesterday been to a ‘Skeptics in the Pub’ event on MEDITATION in Cambridge (my home town since last year) I had to think about the subject quite a bit. As I have hardly covered this topic on my blog, I am today trying to briefly summarise my view on it. The first thing that […]

Read the rest here: Random thoughts on meditation

American Loon #2043: Dave Mustaine

Dave Mustaine is the co-funder of Megadeth and thus a celebrity loon in the tradition of such luminaries as Ted Nugent. Mustaine has voiced his support for an impressive range of wingnut conspiracy theories and is, for instance, a birther, having claimed that Obama was born outside of the US and...

Read the full lunacy: #2043: Dave Mustaine Encyclopedia of American Loons

Medical research is often unreliable. But research into alternative medicine is much worse, and here is why

On this blog, we constantly discuss the shortcomings of clinical trials of (and other research into) alternative medicine. Yet, there can be no question that research into conventional medicine is often unreliable as well. What might be the main reasons for this lamentable fact? A recent BMJ article discussed 5 prominent reasons: Firstly, much research […]

Read the rest here: Medical research is often unreliable. But research into alternative medicine is much worse, and here is why

American Loon #2042: Mark Musser

Rev. Mark Musser is an anti-environmentalist and author of the book Nazi Oaks: The Green Sacrifice of the Judeo-Christian Worldview in the Holocaust. The purpose of the book is to “expose the integral, indeed indispensable, role the ‘Green’” movement played, from the late 1800s into the 1940s,...

Read the full lunacy: #2042: Mark Musser Encyclopedia of American Loons

Lymph-drainage: we need more and better research

I have mentioned lymph drainage before. It is a gentle massage technique applied along the lymph vessels and nodes to stimulate lymph flow. All sorts of extraordinary claims are made for this treatment. In  particular, lymphoedema after surgery for breast cancer, which can be a debilitating complication, is claimed to be preventable with this approach. […]

Read the rest here: Lymph-drainage: we need more and better research

Homeopathy for cancer? No, most definitely not!

Doctor Jens Wurster is no stranger to this blog; previously I discussed his claim that he has treated more than 1000 cancer patients homeopathically and we could even cure or considerably ameliorate the quality of life for several years in some, advanced and metastasizing cases. So far, his claims were based not on evidence published […]

Read the rest here: Homeopathy for cancer? No, most definitely not!

Homeopathy for psychiatric patients? Yes, apparently, it is ‘advisable’, even in severe cases!

The two German authors start their article (it is in German but has an English abstract to which I refer here) by claiming that “homeopathy is steadily gaining in sympathy in the population.” This is a very odd statement, considering that the sales figures in Germany and elsewhere have, in fact, been declining. Any homeopathy-paper […]

Read the rest here: Homeopathy for psychiatric patients? Yes, apparently, it is ‘advisable’, even in severe cases!

American Loon #2041: Abdul Alim Musa

A.k.a. Clarence Reams (original name) Imam Abdul Alim Musa is a Muslim activist, director of Masjid Al-Islam in D.C., member of the Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought, popular speaker and, perhaps most notably, founder and director of As-Sabiqun, an anti-Semitic Muslim group (more here)...

Read the full lunacy: #2041: Abdul Alim Musa Encyclopedia of American Loons

Bogus cancer therapies – but with NHS cedentials

Please bear with me and have a look at the three short statements quoted below: 1 Reiki … a Reiki practitioner channels this pure ‘chi’, the ‘ki’ in Reiki, or energy through her hands to the recipient, enhancing and stimulating the individual’s natural ability to restore a sense of wellbeing. It is instrumental in lowering […]

Read the rest here: Bogus cancer therapies – but with NHS cedentials

Homeopathy in the Age of Antimicrobial Resistance: Is It a Viable Treatment for Upper Respiratory Tract Infections?

An article entitled “Homeopathy in the Age of Antimicrobial Resistance: Is It a Viable Treatment for Upper Respiratory Tract Infections?” cannot possibly be ignored on this blog, particularly if published in the amazing journal ‘Homeopathy‘. The title does not bode well, in my view – but let’s see. Below, I copy the abstract of the […]

Read the rest here: Homeopathy in the Age of Antimicrobial Resistance: Is It a Viable Treatment for Upper Respiratory Tract Infections?

American Loon #2040: William J. Murray

William J. Murray III is the son of atheist activist Madalyn Murray O'Hair, and was involved in Murray O’Hair’s famous effort to end mandatory prayers in public schools in 1963. Murray later turned Baptist minister and wingnut lobbyist (his 2016 book Utopian Road to Hell: Enslaving America and the World With Central Planning was published by WND Books, no less)...

Read the full lunacy: #2040: William J. Murray Encyclopedia of American Loons

American Loon #2039: Madison Murphy

We don’t know exactly who Madison Murphy is, or where she is now, but in 2012 she was a student at North Carolina State University. There she complained, in a student newspaper, about how evolution was presented in her classes: “My professor started talking about the Theory of Evolution as if it...

Read the full lunacy: #2039: Madison Murphy Encyclopedia of American Loons

Center for Inquiry Sues Drug Retailer for Fraud Over Sale of Homeopathic Medicine

As this press-release is important and entirely self-explanatory, I will post it here without comment (other than congratulating the CFI for their action and encouraging organisations in other countries to follow suit) : The Center for Inquiry has filed a lawsuit in the District of Columbia on behalf of the general public against drug retailer […]

Read the rest here: Center for Inquiry Sues Drug Retailer for Fraud Over Sale of Homeopathic Medicine

More on vaccination scepticism, and the plea for a no-fault vaccination injury compensation scheme

Currently, there are measles outbreaks almost everywhere. I have often pointed out that SCAM does not seem to be entirely innocent in this development. Now another study examined the relationship between SCAM-use and vaccination scepticism. Specifically, the researchers wanted to know whether a person’s more general health-related worldview might explain this relationship. A cross-sectional online survey […]

Read the rest here: More on vaccination scepticism, and the plea for a no-fault vaccination injury compensation scheme

2018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #27

Story of the Week... Toon of the Week... Quote of the Week... Coming Soon on SkS... Climate Feedback Reviews... Poster of the Week... SkS Week in Review... 

Story of the Week...

Global warming may be twice what climate models predict

Sunset. Credit: Patrik Linderstam, Unsplash

Future global warming may eventually be twice as warm as projected by climate models and sea levels may rise six metres or more even if the world meets the 2°C target, according to an international team of researchers from 17 countries.

The findings published last week in Nature Geoscience are based on observational evidence from three warm periods over the past 3.5 million years when the world was 0.5°C-2°C warmer than the pre-industrial temperatures of the 19th Century.

The research also revealed how large areas of the polar ice caps could collapse and significant changes to ecosystems could see the Sahara Desert become green and the edges of tropical forests turn into fire dominated savanna.

“Observations of past warming periods suggest that a number of amplifying mechanisms, which are poorly represented in climate models, increase long-term warming beyond climate model projections,” said lead author, Prof Hubertus Fischer of the University of Bern.

“This suggests the carbon budget to avoid 2°C of global warming may be far smaller than estimated, leaving very little margin for error to meet the Paris targets.” 

Global warming may be twice what climate models predict, Newsroom, UNSW Sydney, July 5, 2018 

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Toon of the Week...

 

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Quote of the Week...

The dirty little secret behind 'clean energy' wood pellets

Wood pellets will be counted as renewable energy, the EPA administrator, Scott Pruitt has said, even though the EPA’s scientific board is still working on its advice on their environmental impact. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

“Philosophically it looks good but practically it looks pretty bad in many cases,” said William Schlesinger, a biogeochemist and member of the US Environmental Protection Agency advisory board.

“When you cut down existing trees and burn them, you immediately put carbon dioxide in the air. None of the companies can guarantee they can regrow untouched forest to capture the same amount of carbon released. The whole renewable forest industry is kind of a hoax in terms of its benefit as climate mitigation.”

Schlesinger added, however, that burning wood can result in lower emissions than coal if managed and certified properly and could be used as a “bridge fuel” as solar and wind energy continues to expand.

Scott Pruitt, the administrator of the EPA , recently announced that wood pellets will be classified as renewable energy similar to solar or wind power.

This has caused alarm among some experts, including those on the EPA’s own scientific board, which is still working on its own advice on the environmental impact of burning wood to generate energy. “Pruitt announcing that before we weighed in was appalling – frankly it was insulting to our existence,” said Schlesinger.

“If you burn young trees and regrow them, it might not be too bad. If you venture into older trees or forests that have never been cut before, that can be very bad.”

The dirty little secret behind 'clean energy' wood pellets by Tom Dart & Oliver Milman, Environment, Guardian, June 30, 2018 

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Coming Soon on SkS...

• There are genuine climate alarmists, but they're not in the same league as deniers (Dana)
• Ocean Temperature - Part 1 (Irek Zawadzki)
• Book Review: A Global Warming Primer, by Jeffrey Bennett (David Kirtley, Daniel Bailey)
• Guest Post (John Abraham)
• Land uplift ‘could prevent’ collapse of West Antarctic ice sheet (Daisy Dunne)
• 2018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #28 (John Hartz)
• 2018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #28 (John Hartz)

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Climate Feedback Reviews...

Daily Mail correctly reports that climate change leads to more severe heatwaves, but explanation of recent weather is off the mark

Cliate Feedback asked a team of scientists to analyze of Scorching Earth: Global warming to blame for all-time heat records being set worldwide, as experts warn stifling temperatures will continue to soar by Joe Pinkstone, Daily Mail, July 4, 2018

Six scientists analyzed the article and estimate its overall scientific credibility to be 'neutral'.

Review Summary

This article in the Daily Mail describes recent record warmth occurring in a number of different places. But while the article is correct to note that climate change results in more frequent and stronger heatwaves, scientists who reviewed it found that the article (and particularly the headline) is not entirely accurate in its explanation of how these heatwaves relate to climate change.

Daily Mail correctly reports that climate change leads to more severe heatwaves, but explanation of recent weather is off the mark, Edited by Scott Johnson, Climate Feedback, July 5, 2018

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Poster of the Week...

 

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SkS Week in Review... 

• 2018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #27 by John Hartz
• New research, June 25 - July 1, 2018 Ari Jokimäki
• 10th run of Denial101x starts on July 10! by BaerbelW
• Declare energy independence with carbon dividends by Joseph Robertson (Climate Consensus - the 97%, The Guardian)
• Future projections of Antarctic ice shelf melting by Guest Author (ClimateSight)
• Republicans try to save their deteriorating party with another push for a carbon tax by Dana Nuccitelli (Climate Consensus - the 97%, The Guardian)
• 2018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #26 by John Hartz

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American Loon #2038: Mike Murdock (?)

One of the central proponents of the prosperity gospel, Michael Dean “Mike” Murdock is a singer-songwriter, televangelist and pastor of the Texas-based so-called Wisdom Center ministry, where he also hosts the School of Wisdom with Mike Murdock television program. He is famous for various...

Read the full lunacy: #2038: Mike Murdock (?) Encyclopedia of American Loons

IN PRAISE OF THE WONDERFUL SELF-HEALING POWERS OF OUR BODY

Alternative practitioners practise highly diverse therapies. They seem to have nothing in common – except perhaps that ALL of them are allegedly stimulating our self-healing powers (and except that most proponents are latently or openly against vaccinations). And it is through these self-healing powers that the treatments in question cure anything and become a true […]

Read the rest here: IN PRAISE OF THE WONDERFUL SELF-HEALING POWERS OF OUR BODY

Congratulations to ‘HOMEOPATHY’, the journal of the UK ‘Faculty of Homeopathy’

The Impact Factor (IF) of a journal is a measure reflecting the yearly average number of citations to recent articles published in that journal. It is frequently used as a measure of the importance of a journal within its field; journals with higher impact factors are often deemed to be more important than those with lower […]

Read the rest here: Congratulations to ‘HOMEOPATHY’, the journal of the UK ‘Faculty of Homeopathy’

The myths of homeopathy: resounding answers turn out to be resounding lies

I stumbled over an article entitled ‘The myths of homeopathy: Resounding answers‘. I thought it was great fun, so much so, that I copied it below – not just once but twice. The second time I took the liberty of replacing the little porkies told by homeopaths with the truth. THE ORIGINAL Homeopathic medicines are […]

Read the rest here: The myths of homeopathy: resounding answers turn out to be resounding lies

American Loon #2037: Jerry Mungadze

Reparative therapy is dangerous garbage, and promoters of such therapy are accordingly loons. But lunacy comes in degrees. Jerry Mungadze, ex-gay therapist, is definitely at the deep end of the spectrum (that doesn’t prevent him from being promoted by crazies that count as mainstream among the...

Read the full lunacy: #2037: Jerry Mungadze Encyclopedia of American Loons

Why are alternative practitioners so stubborne?

Why  do most alternative practitioners  show such dogged determination not to change their view of the efficacy of their therapy, even if  good evidence shows that it is a placebo? This is the question that I have been pondering for some time. I have seen many doctors change their mind about this or that treatment […]

Read the rest here: Why are alternative practitioners so stubborne?

Homeopathy: does killing holidaymakers via bad advice count as ‘high standards’?

Homeopaths are not generally known for the reliability of their recommendations. This advice by the UK Society of Homeopaths (SoH) was emailed to me a few days ago (how on earth did they know I was on holiday?). It is just too weird and wonderful – I cannot resist the temptation of showing it to you: […]

Read the rest here: Homeopathy: does killing holidaymakers via bad advice count as ‘high standards’?

Antioxidant supplements produce expensive urine, wealthy manufacturers, BUT NOT FERTILE MEN!

Several previous studies have suggested improvements in sperm quality after vitamin supplementation, and several reviews have drawn tentatively positive conclusions: The current literature seems to suggest a beneficial effect of antioxidants on male infertility. Several studies have reported a significant increase in sperm quality and pregnancy rates when the men were supplemented by specific vitamins […]

Read the rest here: Antioxidant supplements produce expensive urine, wealthy manufacturers, BUT NOT FERTILE MEN!

Live blood analysis, another SCAM to avoid

Live Blood Analysis (LBA) is a diagnostic tool used by some SCAM practitioners (e. g. chiropractors, naturopaths, medics). It marks a new era of scientific discovery, at least this is what its proponents claim. LBA sounds impressive, looks impressive, commands impressive revenue – but, once we investigate a little closer, it turns out to be […]

Read the rest here: Live blood analysis, another SCAM to avoid

American Loon #2036: Markwayne Mullin

Markwayne Mullin has been the United States representative for Oklahoma’s 2nd congressional district since 2013. As a congressman, Mullin has done such things as claiming that physical fitness is proof of foodstamp fraud, and, well, this one. But that’s par for the course. What entitles Mullin to...

Read the full lunacy: #2036: Markwayne Mullin Encyclopedia of American Loons

Germany, the ‘promised land’ for cancer quacks

With depressing regularity, we hear that this or that VIP has decided to travel to Germany to get her/his cancer cured. As long as I can remember, cancer quackery has been wide-spread in Germany. More recently, dozens of private clinics have sprung up that seem to specialise in treating rich, foreign cancer patients. The message […]

Read the rest here: Germany, the ‘promised land’ for cancer quacks