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It is difficult to know when looking at the claims of many alternative medicine web sites, whether the people involved are a) deluded or b) fraudulent. For my part, and being a good natured soul, I tend to believe most people are just into weird things and are rather locked into their strange world view. They genuinely feel they are helping people by selling their products and services. To challenge [read more…]
In the past I have been critical of the exaggerated claims made by the promoters of salvestrols as the new super-food-supplement. There is no evidence to suggest that these plant-derived chemicals have any positive effect on reducing cancer risk when taken in supplement form or for forming any part of a medical regime for cancer sufferers. Trials are apparently underway, but the best evidence to-date has been in-vitro studies of [read more…]
It’s been a bad week for Gillian. The anti-quackery blogging brigade have been partaking in bouts of the great British pastime of uncontrolled Schadenfreude (why did we leave it to the Germans to coin that term?) after the Advertising Standards Authority stopped Gillian McKeith as advertising herself as ‘Dr Gillian’. The Guardian printed a huge article by Ben Goldacre about how she is a ‘Menace to Science’ and how her [read more…]
Those of you who have read my last blog entry might be under the impression that I believe the Daily Mail is a deeply ignorant and offensive paper that panders to its bigoted readers’ prejudices and does nothing but promote its right wing individualistic nonsense. Furthermore, I may have left the impression that the Daily Mail is little more than a conduit for alternative medicine fraudsters who use the rag [read more…]
The Quackometer has been up and running for just about a year and has seen some serious traffic increases over the past six months. Starting off with just a few hits per day, the daily unique visits now stand in the many hundreds, with a peak recently of several thousand. Cripes! What started off as a bit of a bored joke has now grown into a proper web site. So, [read more…]
A big thanks to quackometer correspondent, a broadcaster, journalist and nutritional therapist, Suzi Grant for bringing me to the attention of the wonderful sounding healing technique of Phytobiophysics®. (please don’t sue me…) This is a technique that is being promoted by the Institute of Phytobiophysics which follows the Mossop Philosophy through its products and courses. The Mossop philosophy is supposed to: harnesses the vibration energy of plants to release energy [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…]
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…]
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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