I had to share this with you. Following on from my recent Quack Word ‘Doctor’ blog, I came across the Royal College of Alternative Medicine (RCAM) , a Dublin based – well, I’m not sure quite what it is… What caught my eye was just the shameless aggrandisement of the site. It is quite hilarious, if not a little repetitive at times. Calling yourself ‘Doctor’ is somewhat pompous when all [read more…]
UPDATE 8th February 2007 Well, six months after first posting this entry, the complementary IT team at Dr Wendy’s support organisation have made a few spelling corrections. I thought this might happen soon, as this entry became the most widely read entry on the site. I guess it was being passed round a bit – thousands of times. So, it looks like, after much speculation, Wendy’s services are not complimentary, [read more…]
UPDATE 12/2/07 Congratulations to Ben Goldacre and the crew at Bad Science for getting Dr Gillian McKeith banned from using the title ‘Dr’. In today’s Guardian she is fully exposed as a Menace to Science. The Advertising Standards Authority have agreed that her use of that cheaply acquired title is thoroughly misleading. One down…************************************************************ Yes, I know. This is surprising quack word, but let me explain. I’m not really writing [read more…]
Yes, sometimes I do get filled with self-doubts, usually in the night. It soon passes. But you see, there is just so much quackery out there that any rational and honest thinker must fully entertain the idea that they have got something horribly wrong. After all, the sceptic should always be challenging their own assumptions. Is the black duck guilty of close-minded, self-dissembling and narrow thinking? Now, in the UK [read more…]
A correspondent has made valid points about the quackometer that I should be careful to ensure that it only awards Canards to real quacks. A sentiment I share and I worry about how to achieve this. I was told to make sure I didn’t get the ‘good guys’ who look into the effectiveness of alternative treatments. Fair enough – but this is a murky world, and telling the good guys [read more…]
If you would like to receive emails whenever the quackometer finds a quack newspaper article, then provide your email address here. Email alerts will only be sent for the most quacky stories and you can choose which region of the world you want to know about. Your email address will only be used by the quackometer automatic alert engine to warn you about quack stories. The black duck is not [read more…]
I have recently been accused of working for the ‘drug industry’ and just picking on the ‘little guys’ who are using gentle, more human, and less capitalist healing methods. Well, as I say in my definition of quackery, quack thinking can come from all quarters and all sides of the orthodox/alternative medicine camps. ‘Big Pharma’ is a word that is pejoratively used to criticise drug companies in their pursuit of [read more…]
I believe that organic food is a con, is not necessarily more healthy for you, tastes no different, and is damaging to the environment. There, I have got that off my chest, but unfortunately I now feel like I have just admitted to being a child murderer, a racist or even a supporter of George Bush’s foreign policy. Let me explain… The word organic is now synonymous with everything good, [read more…]
I think that this may be a story of despair. It may be a story about the mountain that has to be climbed if we are to live a society where quacks find it hard to profit from their lies, misinformation and delusions. At present it is a story about how newspapers contribute significantly and fundamentally to the environment in which people are swindled out of their money by quacks [read more…]
As you know, the quackometer works by counting words, or combinations of words, that strongly suggest the web site is full of quackery. I thought I would write about a few of those words and why they are dead give-aways. So, ‘Holistic’ – not in itself necessarily anything to do with medicine, but this word is often used with medicine when quackery is at work. Why is this and what [read more…]
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