Archive for category Quacks
Quack Focus: The BBC’s ‘Health Focus’ On Homeopathy
Posted by Marsh in 10:23, Homeopathy, Journalism, Media, Quacks, Skepticism on May 18th, 2010
Since the beginning of our 10:23 Campaign, it’s become increasingly clear that there are an awful lot of parties out there waging a war on reason with regards to homeopathy – from Homeopathic Dana (so-called because he’s smaller and weaker than Dana International, the transsexual Israeli winner of the 1998 Eurovision Song Contest), spambot and drive-by troll ‘Dr’ Nancy Malik, idiot and BBC favourite Gemma Hoefkens, bowel-botherer Greg ‘Kaizen Clinic’ Wimbourne and all manner of ‘health’ activists peddling Big Pharma paranoia, while also peddling magic. The actions of these people I can actually understand (thought not condone): they sell homeopathy for a living, they have a very vested interest in keeping people in the dark as to what it is and why it’s bullshit. Homeopathy is how they make their name, how they feed their family, and how they milk their loyal and vulnerable supporters. It’s what they do.
However, alongside the honest, up-front, god-fearing quacks and charlatans, we’ve had to fight the homeo-forces on another front: the media. Almost universally, when homeopathy is discussed in the media, they ask a homeopath. At best, they also ask a healthcare professional, or (failing that) me, to represent the other side, while leaning the conversation in the favour of the water-wizard. The homeopath gets the first and last word, and the balance of the debate is very firmly on terra homeo. That’s when they’re not just outright selling homeopathic treatments, or allowing homeopaths to wax lyrical about how ‘it worked for me’ and ‘it can’t be placebo as it works on my baby/animal/etc’. This is the battle ground, and it’s this fight we choose to fight – so be it.
But it still pisses me off when it’s the BBC drinking the homeopathic Kool-Aid.
I mean, I love the BBC – they’re meant to be fair, unbiased by commercial concerns, free to investigate and report, educate and entertain, and all that good stuff. Sure, they may spend a little too much money giving Graham Norton a career, or padding out Saturday night’s with Dr Who and fancy dancing (neither of which I particularly care for), but they’re still ace. Except, when they do this:
The view of the regulatory body for pharmacists, who are consulting their members about how the products are currently marketed, is that people who buy homeopathic products should be advised that they do not work and only have a placebo effect.
But according to homeopaths, the real issue behind the consultation is the threat complementary medicine is posing to the highly lucrative relationship between the drug companies and the Health Service.
Face – meet palm. Read the rest of this entry »
Music Medicine: ‘Sound Feelings’, Bullshit Concepts
Posted by Marsh in Pseudomedicine, Quacks on April 22nd, 2010
When most people hear about the healing powers of music, I’m sure they think of the soft soulful beats of Lionel Richie or Michael Bolton, gently ushering them through a messy break-up – I know I do. But for some, music has healing powers of a more literal, less-early 90s housewife and altogether more bullshit nature. I’m talking, in fact, about Sound Feelings, a Californian company founded by Howard Richman, who proudly proclaim:
“We are music, health and education audio and book publishers. We specialize in music medicine, music instruction, weight loss , alternative therapies and film scoring“
An eclectic mix there, I’m sure you’ll agree. I’m sure you’ll also allow me to skip over the film scoring and piano lessons, and get right down to the good stuff – taking a look at the alternative therapies on offer, this film-scoring-music-guru will merrily peddle you products for ‘Internal Cleansing‘, weight loss products and books, as well as – amazingly – a weight loss photo. Which is literally just a photoshopped photo of the current-sized-You, adjusted in order to make you look slimmer. And black and white. Apparently, this is a great motivational technique. Yeah.
On top of all that, the good maestro advises on a dangerous-sounding 10-Point Colon Cleanse – because, I don’t know about you, but I always take digestive advice from someone with a B.A. degree in piano performance (from UCLA, no less).Surprisingly, Howard’s not a doctor, or any kind of science-acquainted person. In fact, one of the few things I particularly like about the site is that his bio describes him as being an ‘unlikely “expert” in the field of weight loss.’
You can say that again. Read the rest of this entry »
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Pssst! Needle-Free Acupuncture: Reality-Free Bullshit
Posted by Marsh in Acupuncture, Pseudomedicine, Pseudoscience, Quacks, Skepticism on April 6th, 2010
Mind Body Wallet Bullshit Spirit festivals are an endless source of textbook woo – be it past-life regressionists taking people back to prehistoric times, psychics claiming to have been involved in all manner of police investigations, or dowsers explaining that wooden dowsing rods work because wood naturally seeks out water. Come to think of it, I’ve seen all of those things – in the very same room. They really do have to be seen to be believed.
Often, the contents of a MBWBS event tend to vary from the silly, to the deceptive, to the outright ridiculous and offensive – that’s relatively standard fare, really. Sometimes, however, an exhibitor is thrown up that’s simply and utterly dangerous – and it was the charming practitioners from Innersound that filled the role at the last festival I visited. (Listeners to our Skeptics With A K podcast will already know all about Innersound and their needle-free ‘Qi’ therapy).
Before you all dash off to Google Innersound and check out their woo-filled website (don’t worry, I’ll be doing that for you in a bit anyway), let me first explain to you how I came across them initially. Wandering around said MBWBS event, checking out the various stalls, I got chatting to an elderly Korean woman with a massage table. She explained to me that, due to fear in the West over the use of needles, she was giving people the chance to try needle-free acupuncture. Or ‘acu’, you might call it. Obviously, I was intrigued, I was mystified, and above all I was skeptical. “How do you do acupuncture without needles?”, I thought.
“How do you do acupuncture without needles?” I asked her.
“Oh, it’s simple – we use sound vibrations applied along acupressure points, which resonate with the frequencies of our own bodies, so that they interact with the healing centre of our inner core and unlock the healing energy within”, she replied Read the rest of this entry »
Dogs And Autism: Human Sanity Concerns Over ‘Canine Health Concern’
Posted by Marsh in Emotional Freedom Technique, Homeopathy, Pseudomedicine, Quacks, Skepticism, Veterinary Medicine on March 23rd, 2010
As friends, stalkers, regular readers or simply plain-old psychics might know, I’ve been out of the country for a week, throwing myself off the side of mountains in the name of adrenaline, enjoyment and over-priced middle-class adventure-holiday fun. Hence my shocking goggle-tan, slight working-class-guilt-pangs and radio silence here on the blog. Fortunately, I had a great time away… but I’ve got to say I’m a bit disappointed by how things were when I got back. People are still pretending to talk to the dead, homeopathy’s still on the NHS, and the Daily Mail is still pumping out batshit lunacy. Really, did you all do nothing while I was gone? Shocking.
Speaking of the Daily Mail and my own relative silence of late, here’s something uber-old-hat by now (news these days moves so fast) but I felt I had to write it up partly because a) it’s batshit insane, b) it’s a good example of how fallacious arguments are entirely interchangeably applicable to a whole range of topics and c) it gives me a chance to make some cheap gags:
Vaccines ‘are making our dogs sick as vets cash in’ - Source: Daily Mail (obviously).
See what I mean? Replace ‘dogs’ for ‘babies’ and ‘vets’ for ‘doctors’, and you’ve got a textbook anti-vaccination statement, a la Miss McCarthy. And it doesn’t stop there:
“Vaccines given to dogs are making them ill, a pet charity claimed yesterday. Profit-hungry drug companies and vets are ‘frightening’ dog owners into inoculating their pets more often than necessary, according to Canine Health Concern.”
If this isn’t PR for the Canine Health Concern charity, I don’t know what is. And it doesn’t stop there, either Read the rest of this entry »
Why We Should Avoid Ubisoft Products
Posted by Mike in Media, Pseudoscience, Public Health, Quacks, Skepticism, vaccination on January 5th, 2010
In 1994, my friend Russel called me raving about a new playable demo he’d got from the cover disc of a PC magazine. The game was a reasonably early example of a real-time strategy game, in which the player was required to harvest resources, construct buildings and raise an army with which to crush the opposition; lest they do the same. It was called Warcraft: Orcs and Humans; you may have heard of its descendants. The playable demo came with four levels, which I devoured. I quickly bought the full game shortly thereafter and its sequel, Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness, the following year. I had developed a taste for real-time strategy games and wanted more.
In 1995, another phone call from Russel introduced me to Westwood Studios new RTS game – Command & Conquer – which I came to love more than I loved Warcraft. One of its distinguishing features, setting it apart from the Warcraft series was the inclusion of full-motion video sequences (with real actors!) introducing each mission. After making free with Russel’s copy of C&C, I bought my own copy in early 1996, followed by its sequels as they were released, including the games from the C&C spin-off series Red Alert.
That was until 2008, and the publication of Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3. By then Westwood Studios had been bought up by gaming giants Electronic Arts, and with more money behind them (and much more money in the video game market than in 1995), EA were able to cast Hollywood stars for Red Alert 3‘s full motion video segments. The cast included Tim Curry as Soviet Premier Antony Cherdenko; J. K. Simmons as US President Howard T. Ackerman; Jonathan Pryce as Field Marshall Robert Bingham; George Takei as Japanese Emperor Yoshiro; and one Jenny McCarthy as Special Agent Tanya.
Jessica Simpson: Ear-Candling So YOU Don’t Have To!
Posted by Marsh in Ear Candles, Pseudomedicine, Quacks on December 23rd, 2009
As regular, sporadic or even accidental listeners to our podcast might know, our very own Mike recently discovered ear candles lurking in the murky, unforgiving depths of Chester town centre. Dragged away from the peddler of this particular brand of dangerous crazy before he’d had a chance to a) ask why ear candles are on sale when they’re proven to be ineffective and ludicrously dangerous and b) stop the stupid burning his brain, Mike was left with only one option – rant about it on Skeptics With A K. I suspect being on the show is actually far more beneficial to Mike’s mental health than it is to our listeners’ entertainment levels.
Still, it got me wondering – how many people actually know anything about ear candles? How many people know what they are, what they’re meant to do, what they actually do, and why they’re crazy crazy crazy? Canvassing opinion around colleagues and friends, it seemed to my (entirely un-scientifically-small) survey that the number of people who’d even heard of them was pretty low, and amongst those it was a mixed response on whether ear candles are any good or not. Which is a bit disturbing, because – as I mentioned – they’re actually crazy crazy crazy. So I found myself trying to explain to these lovely folk what an ear candle is, and the potential for harm that it can do. ‘If only’, thought I at the time, ‘I had some kind of video where a well-known yet annoying-enough-not-to-mind-seeing-them-in-discomfort celebrity had filmed themselves using an ear candle, so I could show people how woo this crap really is (and how crap this woo really is), and they could be in equal parts informed and grossed-out’.
Well, this is Christmas after all – the time of the year that wishes really do come true. They do. Ask anyone that’s been on Noel’s Christmas Presents and they’ll tell you. Oh, plus I can tell you they do, because lo and indeed behold what the intertubes have presented us with:
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