Liverpool NHS Primary Care Trust funds a Department of Homeopathy, one the last four remaining publicly funded homeopathic hospitals in the UK. It publicises that the clinic in the Old Swan Health Centre can offer homeopathic treatments for everything from arthritis to depression and bowel disorders. There is no good evidence that this...
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Let’s run with an idea and see where it goes.
The 10:23 campaign has now had loads of publicity and Boots have failed to address any of the central concerns: mainly, that homeopathy is a daft pseudoscience. Moreover, the pharmacy profession and the drugs regulator have remained silent.
In all likelihood, Boots will not withdraw...
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Thanks to Stephen Law at the Centre of Inquiry for posting this video of myself and Simon Singh, just after our talks at Conway Hall.
The day started with a mass overdose of homeopathic pills (see report in the Telegraph; it’s also on the front page of the BBC web site) , followed by talks...
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Right now, if the homeopaths are correct, I should have paralysed arms, be in severe pain, have convulsions, delirium, skin itching all over and be unable to stand. That is because I have taken a massive overdose of the homeopathic remedies, Belladonna 30C, Sulphur 30C and Lachesis 5MM. I wrote this post last...
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This Saturday, hundreds of people, in many cities, will be demonstrating outside Boots the Chemists about their selling of homeopathic remedies. Each volunteer will be taking a homeopathic ‘overdose’ of a Boots homeopathy product to demonstrate that there is nothing in the tablets but sugar.
Out of all the volunteer ‘overdosers’ and their supporters...
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In the last few days, a new campaign has been launched with the aim of showing that homeopathy is an ‘absurd pseudoscience’ and that Boots the Chemists should not be selling these sugar pills to the public as if they were genuine medical products. The ‘10:23’ campaign, as it is known, has a...
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Further documents have been published after the House of Commons held its enquiry into the evidence base for government policy on homeopathy. There are some real treats in there, but I am most concerned about new evidence from the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (the MHRA) on how they test the public’s...
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Over the next few weeks, I will be taking the Quackometer on tour around the UK and giving talks exploring what factors allow pseudo-medicines to survive despite their lack of specific effects and scientific absurdity. Giving examples of quacks and cures from the 18th and 19th Century, I will be comparing them...
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Tim Minchin’s rather brilliant poem Storm is being made into a film. You can see the newly released trailer above. The full poem (available here) tells a rather familiar story for thinking people: how do you react when cornered by absurd ‘alternative’ thinking in a social situation? In Storm, Tim describes a North London...
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James Randi is a hero to many rational people around the world. He has done more than, perhaps, any person alive to promote rational and clear thinking about claims of the paranormal and alternative medicine. His million dollar challenge acts as a marvelous foil to mountebanks and charlatans. He simply says to them,...
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We have a conflicted relationship with the things that give us pleasure. We fear overindulgence may be harming us, and we desperately seek evidence that suggests our habits are beneficial, so that we can continue to enjoy them without guilt. This year appears to have been a good year for coffee in this...
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The Eighteenth Century in England was the Golden Age of Quackery, with London being a world capital for mountebanks, charlatans and other practitioners of irregular medicine. Consumers in Georgian England had access to an unparalleled selection of medical entrepreneurship from regular doctors, lay quacks, foreigners with exotic elixirs, and even preachers such as...
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