Jenny McCarthy is one of the leading lights of Americas anti-vaccination movement (vocal to the extent that some sceptical wag has created this and her most recent pronouncement relates to the discrediting of the paper that many blame for launching the MMR “controversy” (Or more accurately the Medias MMR hoax). Read the rest of this entry »
Ok so it’s Saturday… But better late then never right? Think about your answer and read the whole post before deciding though!
Homeopathy: the air guitar of medicine. (As christened by Peter Harrison)
Homeopaths are notoriously wedded to the idea that giving people water with nothing in it is better than giving them medicine.
Which just goes to show… You can lead a homeopath to science but you can’t make them think.
conversely you can take a scientist to homeopathy but you can’t make them swallow it. (As Andy Lewis of quackometer kindly pointed out although the events of 1023 might make some question that point!) Mainly because scientists require evidence and the like to accept the healing properties of the magic water…
One of the arguments homeopaths like to put forward is that big pharma is a evil and this somehow means homeopathy works…
Well ok there are issues with big pharma but take Nestle for instance. The babymilk debacle didn’t somehow make thin air chocolate does it?
If it did though it could explain the obesity epidemic.
Here’s to having insomnia ridden beer addled ideas!
In part inspired by the “debate” on the #ten23 hashtag on twitter and the moronic mewing sprouting up on online articles up and down the land here are a couple of flowcharts. Read the rest of this entry »
There has been some hoohaw over on natural news courtesy of everyone’s favourite healthranger (note that r is but a short keypress away from d…) Mike Adams (who I have blogged about before here). It seems the twitter based shorty awards disqualification (more here and here and here) and the 1023 campaign may have broken his fragile little naturopath mind. His ranting here is impressive – it’s scary though to see how quickly not getting ones own way translates into vast and mysterious conspiracies though… How do these peoples minds work? I don’t mean in a general why do they think what they think but literally how does one persons brain cope with so much nonsense and cognitive dissonance?
My mind boggles just trying to conceive it!
Richard Dawkins is a man who, at the least it would be fair to say, divides opinion. For some he is an evangelical atheist with a deep hatred and mistrust of religion and yet others find him tiresome still because of his criticisms of religion and the religious. Now I’m not going to blog too much about Richard Dawkins – though no doubt that could start some reasonably active and impassioned debate…
What I want to blog about is something I’m going to call the “Dawkins effect” this is where what someone says – the content and logic of their arguments seem to be treated as secondary to what people think their motivations and intent is.
Or rather that peoples preconceptions and stereotypes about a person or group of people overrides what they actually say and encourages attribution of motives that may or may not be there to the person/group.
The backlash begins…
The 1023 campaign has already, predictably enough, encouraged somewhat of a “quacklash” – just look
at the homeopaths spamming the #ten23 hashtag on twitter or the copycat pro-homeopathy campaign that has arisen.
However now it seems those outside the homeopathy and skeptical communities are getting involved in the debate… And some tired and cliched arguments are surfacing…
Chief among these seems to be “what’s the harm?”. Why should there be a campaign against something as harmless as homeopathy? I mean it’s their money and their choice isn’t it?
Well yes it is their money and their choice – but if someone was putting their health at direct risk you’d likely intervene or at least comment wouldn’t you?
I’m a patient man in most respects. I am also very much aware that when declaring myself as a skeptic there are certain people who may be uncomfortable answering questions I may ask.
Perhaps they fear being caught out in some sketi-trap of my malicious creation?
Certainly my last post, again inspired by the 1023 campaign, has attracted one drive by comment from the homeopathic community and no more. (Perhaps just having one comment means that from a homeopathic perspective the debate is settled?)
However when you ask a question of a well known member of the homeopathic community, some might say leading, who runs a homeopathic educational organisation no less. That they would have a vested interest in politely answering your queries in the name of public enagement?
Working on the assumption that homeopathy works (I should perhaps be clearer – this is for the benefit of this blog not nessecarily a statement of my own belief) there are a few details I would like to ask some homeopaths in the know.
