July 2015 in review: part 1

There have been a good number of tweets on the #WDDTY hashtag highlighting bonkers claims in the July 2015 edition of WDDTY, so lets take a quick whistle-stop tour through its pages.

We dealt with the cover stories yesterday. Page 2 is (as usual) a full-page “we’ll never take advertising” advert for Altrient, which appears to …

 Continue reading July 2015 in review: part 1 →

Homeopathy promotion at its most despicable (and most dangerous) | Edzard Ernst

I thought I had seen everything that is lamentable about homeopathy. When I came across this article, I had to change my opinion. It is a more despicable, unethical and dangerous promotion of falsehoods than I could have imagined.

Strong words? Read for yourself:

There are treatments that can heal vaccine damage, but few physicians in the conventional medical care […]

Read on: Homeopathy promotion at its most despicable (and most dangerous)

Homeopathy experiment, days 26-30, doses 51-60

Well, I finally finished my homeopathy experiment last night. And [sarcasm] much to my surprise [\sarcasm], my symptom journal remained completely empty for the entire duration of the experiment. I accepted this challenge not necessarily hoping that my brain would fry, but perhaps hopeful that there would be some kind of effect. Think of the possibilities if homeopathy could actually work: a cheap, simple, and safe way to cure anything! That’s any doctor’s (and any patient’s) dream!

Yes, despite what homeopaths and other alternative medicine practitioners would have you believe, doctors actually do hope their patients get better and aren’t in this to make a profit. Though I have to say that homeopaths must make a pretty damned good living, selling what amounts to sugar pills with a few drops of water on them for exorbitant markups...

Anyway, that all aside, here are the videos from the last 5 days...

Read more, watch the videos and comment at: Homeopathy experiment, days 26-30, doses 51-60}

July 2015: the firehose of stupid at full blast

The July 2015 issue of WDDTY is out. You can tell from the cover that it’s going to be a cracker. HPV vaccine: new dangers revealed! Why low-cal sweeteners make you fat! Recipe for better breast health! How I beat Lyme disease! Staying sun-safe naturally! And the headline: 10 minutes to stronger bones.

Based on these I predict: an anti-vax diatribe …

Continue reading July 2015: the firehose of stupid at full blast →

Many nurses employ alternative medicine but few understand it | Edzard Ernst

In a recent Editorial, I wrote: “Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) is popular, and many nurses seem to be embracing it in the hope of helping their patients…But despite its popularity, CAM has remained a highly controversial area: the evidence-base is often unconvincing or non-existent. For most forms of CAM, we thus know too little […]

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Common misconceptions about alternative medicine | Edzard Ernst

I just came across a website  that promised to ”cover 5 common misconceptions about alternative medicine that many people have”. As much of this blog is about this very issue, I was fascinated. Here are Dr Cohen’s 5 points in full:

5 Misconceptions about Alternative Medicine Today

1. Alternative Medicine Is Only an Alternative
In fact, […]

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Calling out (in)Clement information

Avoiding cancer is a doddle!

So declareth the esteemed oncologist, George Dryden, on her authoritative medical blog, ‘it shouldn’t happen to a vegan™’. Sorry, wait, strike that; so pontificateth, the Brian Clement-beguiled, Hippocrates Health Institute-certified ‘Health Educator’, George Dryden, on her egregious generator of wind for blowing up her guru’s freshly-flushed jacksy....

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Acupuncture for Alzheimer’s? | Edzard Ernst

One could define alternative medicine by the fact that it is used almost exclusively for conditions for which conventional medicine does not have an effective and reasonably safe cure. Once such a treatment has been found, few patients would look for an alternative. Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is certainly one such condition. Despite intensive research, we are […]

Read on: Acupuncture for Alzheimer’s?

Homeopathy experiment, days 22-25 doses 43-50

The past four days have been, well, let’s just say uneventful. I’ve been waiting for some dramatic effect to begin, but I’ve been disappointed. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not hoping that my brain will fry, but I would at least be encouraged by some sort of symptom. A strange itch, an odd sensation, the feeling that I can smell sound. SOMETHING. But instead there’s been nothing. After all the dire warnings and pleading to try a different remedy because the Psorinum 1M is so devastating, there’s been nothing.

Have I said that too many times? NOTHING

But once again I’m being given excuses, this time by @22VenkateshN...

Read the rest, watch the videos and comment at: Homeopathy experiment, days 22-25 doses 43-50}

A New Podcast: Take That Podcast!

By @tkthtetymology & @TakeThatGMOs

 From our test run. More shenanigans. Would you like to take something new, all the way into your earholes? Let the upcoming Take That Podcast bang your eardrum and hammer your anvil with skepticism and shenanigans. Our maiden voyage will sail this weekend and be released early next week, featuring TakeThatDarwin, TakeThatGMOs, TakeThatReason, […]


Read the rest at: A New Podcast: Take That Podcast!}

The "Take This" blog is written by a collective of skeptics hunting down misleading, uninformed and sometimes outright insane claims on social media.

12 bogus arguments about homeopathy | Edzard Ernst

If you talk to advocates of homeopathy, you are bound to hear claims that are false or misleading; in fact, you hear them so regularly that you might begin to doubt the truth. For those who have such doubts or are in need of some correct counter-arguments, I have listed here those 12 bogus claims which, in my experience, […]

Read on: 12 bogus arguments about homeopathy

Harpocrates Speaks: SB277 Opposition: The Smokescreen of Parental Choice

Humans love to have choices. From early on in our childhood, we like to be able to choose what we want to do. Play with this toy or that one. Eat this food or that. And we don't like having limitations placed on our choices, especially if it involves doing something we don't want to do. Our parents try to teach us that while we are able to choose, sometimes our choices have strings attached. "You need to finish your vegetables if you want dessert." We're given the power to choose what to do: eat the veggies so we can have dessert, or choose not to eat the veggies and miss out on dessert. We might not like the options, we might wish we could choose the dessert without any other limits on our choice, but we have to deal with the reality. Depending on our maturity, we may throw a tantrum when we don't get what we want, when there is even the most minor constraint on our choices....

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Fran Sheffield on Homeopathy and Autism

The post Fran Sheffield on Homeopathy and Autism by Anarchic Teapot first appeared on Plague of Mice.

Notorious woomeister Fran Sheffield, caught lying blatantly and unrepentantly by the Aussie authorities and rightfully nicked for it, runs the Homeopathy Plus webshite with her equally deluded husband. He claims his wife’s sugar pills saved his life “more than once” and continue to do so. He provides no evidence for this remarkable and highly improbable assertion. The whole family appears to have bought, or been brainwashed, into the homeopathy cult, which they relentlessly push and profit from.

Sheffield is also thick as thieves with the Australian (anti)Vaccination Network, or whatever they’re calling themselves these days. Almost amusingly, she objects to all these wishy-washy “we’re not anti-vaccine, we’re pro-choice” mouthings and has urged anti-vaxxers to wear the label with pride. She has been seen calling for (usually homeopathic) alternatives to vaccines, which shows how pathetic her grasp of immunisation is, in spite of her claim to have nursing training. You either … Continue reading →

These are your “vaccine experts”: Christina England

Now that I’m done wading into the cesspool of “vaccine experts” found within Facebook, I’ve come to realize that most of them never got any kind of formal training on the science of vaccines. This is no surprise by itself, but it is kind of scary when you realize the number of people who listen to them and take their word as gospel. Even those among them who self-identify as journalists don’t do much journalism, per se. Their brand of journalism is filled with personal opinions and misinterpretation of scientific evidence. Hell, they don’t even consult with anyone who has any kind of scientific training to see if the evidence they have in hand stands up to scrutiny. […]
Read more at: These are your “vaccine experts”: Christina England by Reuben

A ‘ferociously frank’ book | Edzard Ernst

Regular readers of this blog will have noticed: I recently published a ‘memoir‘.

Of all the books I have written, this one was by far the hardest. It covers ground that I felt quite uncomfortable with. At the same time, I felt compelled to write it. For over 5 years I kept at it, revised it, re-revised it, re-conceived the outline, abandoned the project altogether only to pick it up again […]
Read on: A ‘ferociously frank’ book