Top Ten Quackronyms

If you haven't figured it out, a Quackronym is an acronym for something related to Quackery of some sort.
Let's start at my number 10.

10. EVP - Electronic Voice Phenomena
This is something you see on those Ghost Hunter shows, where they claim the noise or interference picked up by their recording device comes from a paranormal source. The people who believe in this nonsense could learn a lesson or two from Scooby Doo.

9. EHF - Extraordinary Human Function

Skepdic says: "An extraordinary human function would be something like the ability to read messages with one's ears, forehead, fingers or some other part of the anatomy besides the eyes. There have even been accounts of reading by sitting on the message. The latter was popular in China in the late 1970's, when the study of EHF became a major research topic at Beijing University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences."

There's a little something called evidence, perhaps these folk should learn what it is.

8. ET - Extra Terrestrial
The reason ET's are so far down this list, is because there is a high probability that some form of life exists somewhere else in the universe. People who think aliens visit earth and that people get abducted by aliens are still crazy though. There is almost no chance that any alien life is close enough to visit earth. If however some alien race were visiting earth, I do not believe for one second they would be at all interested in abducting some of our least sane members of society.

7. DHEA - dehydroepiandrosterone
DHEA is a naturally occurring steroid produced in the adrenal gland. In fact DHEA is very abundant in the human body. However it has been marketed as a "miracle drug" by quack and quack alike, as a cure for everything ranging from auto-immune disorders to weight loss. Quackwatch has a good article on it.

6. NDE - Near Death Experience
Near Death Experiences are often touted as evidence for life after death. I have a few things to say to people who accept this as evidence: Oxygen deprivation, brain damage and hallucination. Here's a link for more information.

5. OBE - Out of Body Experience
I was tempted to combine this into a single category with NDE's, but they are also related to another piece of quackery that doesn't make a nice acronym: Astral Projection. Here's a link to a Michael Shermer video on the 'God Helmet' and Out of Body Experiences. Here's a link to another video about the same helmet. What is abundantly clear from the realistic explanations of these last 2 Quackronyms is that the Human Brain is highly susceptible to manipulation and hallucination. Anyone who has taken some kind of hallucinogen knows this.

4. ESP - Extra Sensory Perception
Believers in ESP are probably either really gullible or Alien-abductee type crazy. No credible evidence has ever been produced for such phenomena, nor any mechanism suggested. Penn and Teller did an episode of 'Bullshit!' that featured an ESP class at a home-based Psychic School. It's good for a laugh.

3. MLM - Multi Level Marketing
Multi Level Marketing just makes me sad. Most of the people that get sucked into it are victims of a scam, plain and simple. They were most likely recruited by other people who  are most likely also victims of the same scam. The simple fact of the matter is that the overwhelming majority of people who try MLM do not make any money. They're not supposed to, it's simply a disguised pyramid scheme, the products they sell are only secondary to the recruitment. When you pay to sign up, the people higher up the pyramid make money.

2. YEC - Young Earth Creationism
I wanted to include Intelligent Design (ID) as another category, but then I would have had to remove one of my other list items, or make it a top 11, which just isn't cool (unless you're Spinal Tap). The reason Young Earth Creationism is so high up on this list (or low down if you prefer it that way) is because to be a YECer you literally have to deny just about all of the findings of science from the last 200 years. Creationists are Quacks of the highest calibre.

1. CAM - Complementary and Alternative Medicine
This blight upon humanity is at the number one spot for a very good reason. With the potential exception of DHEA, none of the other list members have the potential to do any physical harm beyond affecting the intelligence and sanity of the believer. Alternative medicine can cause serious harm, and in some cases result in death, as believers will of avoid getting real life-saving treatments for diseases. What really makes me furious though is that some parents make the choice on behalf of their children, like this Sydney couple who only gave their baby daughter homeopathic remedies and she died from septicaemia and malnutrition.

Just a Different Philosopy?

A friend of mine posted an interesting link on facebook to a study that was done on some potential medical uses for cannabis, and we started up a discussion about it. It was all going well until someone wrote this.

"There's one called Sativex which is legal here... but as any herbalist will tell you, there's a huge difference between the whole plant or a herbal tincture, and an isolated compound from it produced by a pharmaceutical company."

I responded by saying that there is a difference because the isolated compound is the one that actually performs the required function. In the case of this cancer study, it was the THC that inhibited the Epidermis Growth Factor, the other compounds are simply not required for the task and could perhaps even be counter productive.

The aforementioned person then jumped into a conspiratorial barrel of quackery with this statement.

"Then we might as well condemn all herbs to the rubbish bin, discount millions of years of evolution, throw out all knowledge about nutrition, agree that no plant can have any impact on human health, and survive entirely on synthetic chemicals men in white coats agree are *required for the task*, right? Just sayin' :P "

Now I do not know this person, so I don't want to make any judgements about them, but the attitude that I get from this is extremely anti-science. If you want to bash science based medicine, and take herbal remedies instead, go for it, I won't stop you, but what will you do if/when you get so ill, and none of your alternative medicine seems to do the trick? Don't go grovelling to a real doctor, because as you have clearly shown us, you have a deep seated contempt for those evil "men in white coats". FSM forbid, if you need an organ transplant, or any other kind of surgery, it would be awfully painful without those horrible synthetic chemicals that we call anaesthetics.

Needless to say, I responded to their nonsense, trying my best to hold onto my sanity. I was graced by a reply that really disappointed me. They replied by saying: "Think we're just coming from totally different philosophies on health and herbs KJ. But each to their own."
Yes, we have different philosophies, mine is based on evidence and reason. When evidence and reason show my position to be false, I change it. Your philosophy seems to be irrational ranting and delusional belief based, sorry to break it to you, but alternative medicine is baloney.

This whole ordeal reminded me of a song I discovered via. Pharyngula a while ago, if you're of the skeptical mindset, and don't mind a bit of country music, I urge you to check out this video

Anti-Vaxxers are at it again.

What is it with some people? These anti-vaccination people are as deceitful as creationists, quote-mining, lying and pretending that they are the ones promoting honest inquiry.
New Scientist has an article about how the Australian Health Care Complaints Commission had to issue a warning about the misleading information being promoted by the Australian Vaccination Network. Apparently the AVN have been saying some rather absurd things, like measles is a "non-threatening illness" and "vaccines have never been tested". They try to give the impression that they just want parents to make informed decisions about whether to vaccinate their children, while simultaneously feeding them lies. The more that people speak out against their anti-science quackery the less people will be influenced by these charlatans. (hopefully)

UK Homeopathy Funding Cut

The Homeopathy ban I talked about has just made the news again. It's not very accurate to call it a ban, so I'll just refer to it as a funding cut. The British Medical Association has voted to stop providing homeopathic treatments on the National Health Service. The BMA has also said that all homeopathic products should be labelled as 'placebo' when sold in pharmacies. The post on the funding cut from the Telegraph has an excellent way of describing how homeopathy works.

Without wanting to go into it in too much detail here, it is based on:
• a) a mistaken idea that substances that cause a symptom can cure that symptom (e.g. poison ivy causes skin rash so it can cure eczema, or onion causes running eyes so it can cure hay fever) and
• b) that the more dilute a remedy is, the more potent it is – without limit. So – with not a trace of irony – homeopaths offer “remedies” diluted so far that you could reasonably expect to find one molecule in a sphere of water several times larger than the Sun. I am not exaggerating, incidentally.

They also mention an incident in Australia last year where a couple were jailed after they treated their 9 month old daughter's eczema with homeopathic remedies rather than taking her to a doctor. Needless to say, placebo's do not work at all for some conditions and most certainly do not work on 9 month old children who aren't aware they're being treated for anything. Their daughter died of septicaemia as a result of the non-treatment of her condition.

Anyway, here is the link to the post on the Telegraph.

Doctors vote to drop homeopathy on the NHS – and about time

Potential Homeopathy Ban in the UK

Hat Tip: Humanist in Canada

So this is incredibly good news,  medical practitioners are calling for the UK government to stop funding homeopathic remedies saying that they have "no place in the modern health service" which I couldn't agree with more. The suggestion to cut them from funding comes from the fact that the British National Health Service is being forced to make £20 billion worth of budget cuts in the next few years. So proven ineffectual sugar pills and water bottles that cost just as much as real medicine are naturally the first thing to go.

Unfortunately homeopathy has some support from within their government, which I hope doesn't affect the outcome of the ban. Homeopathy supporters were supposedly protesting the ban this past tuesday.

If you have a look down at the comments section on the Telegraph website, some homeopathy supporters are on the brink of claiming that this ban is all a big conspiracy and that the pharmaceutical companies are trying to eliminate the competition. This notion, even if true wouldn't change the fact that homeopathy is a steaming pile of crap that has no effect except the placebo.

Homeopathy is...

Sometimes letting google just speak for itself is the best way to make fun of something.

The Homeopathic A&E

Quite possibly one of the funniest videos I've seen in weeks. (Right up there with College Humor's 'Internet Bridge Troll'.

World Homeopathy Awareness Week

Naturopaths PWN'd themselves

I was linked to an article on a naturopathy news website called naturalnews.com. They have an article explaining some details about research done on the placebo effect. The placebo effect accounts for most of the positive results that come from naturopathic remedies, so by them acknowledging the placebo effect they have pwn'd themselves without realising.

Source

Dugg up an article on Homeopathy

So I was browsing Digg the other day and I came across This Article on homeopathy. The article contained all the usual criticisms of homeopathy, saying that it's unscientific, relies on placebo effect etc. But the most interesting part of the article was this Diagram.

You can click the image to show a larger version of it, but the diagram basically has a blue arrow pointing to one molecule out of 14,000 in the container that is of the active ingredient that makes the homeopathic remedy. I also then has a few interesting captions around it. I'll just write them out here.

"In a homeopathic solution that contains 14,000 molecules and has been diluted to a tpyical 30C, you will likely have to hunt through more than 1,000 bottles to find a single molecule of the original substance."

and

"In a vial of homeopathic sulphur pills at 30C strength, there's significantly more chance of winning the lottery (1 in 14 million) than there is of finding a single molecule of sulphur..."

When looking at the numbers relating to homeopathic remedies, it seems pretty plain to me that homeopathy is completely bogus. Perhaps I'll do another post explaining more about homeopathy if anyone is interested.

Cleansing Part 2: Detox Diets and Fasting

I was informed my first part wasn't long enough, so I'll try make this one a bit more long-winded.

As I mentioned in part 1, Colonic hydrotherapists believe that the foods you eat inevitably "rot" in your large intestine, and poison you from the inside (called autointoxication), thus requiring a "flush" on the inside. Believers of 'detoxification' have a similar view, that our regular food we eat contains 'toxins' and to rid ourselves of them we must go on a specifically tailored diet that purges our body of these toxins, this is the 'cleansing' mentioned in the title of this 'rant'.

autointoxication
n. Self-poisoning caused by endogenous microorganisms, metabolic wastes, or other toxins produced within the body. Also called autotoxemia.

The theory of autointoxication actually came from the ancient Egyptians, the same people who used incantations to magically cure diseases. The ancient Greeks also had a similar belief in autointoxication which was a part of their theory of medicine called Humorism.
Humorism was believed until the advent of modern medicine around the nineteenth century and as modern medicine advanced more evidence piled up against this theory of autointoxication.

Detoxification has come under many guises over the years, but now are generally referred to as 'detox diets'. Some examples of various detox diets over the years are: Grapefruit diets (yes Weird Al Yankovic wrote a parody about grapefruit diets, water fasts, total fasts, Raw food diets, fish diets, lemonade diet, special "anti-toxin" tea diets and so on and so forth.

From Wikipedia
"Some proponents of detox diets emphasize it as a lifestyle rather than a diet. Others have touted spiritual and psychological benefits of regular detox dieting."

As soon as I hear something like "spiritual and psychological benefits, alarm bells start to ring, I smell bovine feces! Though not all detox-ers will believe this crap, they should know that their 5000 year old pseudo scientific beliefs are associated with new-age religious beliefs.
The problem with believing the detox-con artists is that their reasoning behind the whole concept of detoxification is a hoax. Perhaps they feel inadequate as medical practitioners (modern science and medicine holds the trump card), so they feel the need to create their own imaginary disease called "toxins" and they are the only ones who hold the key to the cure. Autointoxication was disproved in 1919 and again in 1922 as I mentioned in part 1 about colonics so their only premise for detoxification is a strawman that was burned nearly a century ago.

I can imagine how horrifying it is to find out that your body poisons itself, but if it were true the human race would have become extinct thousands and thousands of years ago says Vincent F. Cordaro, M.D., an FDA medical officer. "A person who retained wastes and toxins would be very ill and could die if not treated. The whole concept is irrational and unscientific."

Fasting goes by the same principle as detox and colonics, but all that happens is you starve yourself and shock your digestive system. Fasting IS prescribed in modern medicine, but not for detoxification purposes, If you are undergoing certain surgeries, you are not allowed to have food in your digestive system. Certain medical tests also require a short term fast for example cholesterol tests (note by short term I mean around 12 hours, not days).
Longer term fasting or juicing can be dangerous, and potentially fatal, any detoxer promoting medium term fasting or longterm juicing needs a slap with a wet fish.

Cleansing Part 1: Colonics

Ok you may think this is a bit of a strange thing to be ranting about, but it really need a new one ripped.

In short, colonics just take tomorrows shit out today. LITERALLY.

Long version:

Colonics supposedly remove 'toxins' from your body. The first problem we have here is that there is no such thing as 'toxins' if you ask a Colonic Hydrotherapist or whatever they want to be called, they will not be able to name a single toxin, because they don't exist. Furthermore, these imaginary 'toxins' supposedly sit in the "pockets of the colon" (which conveniently do not exist either) and poison your body.
The idea that your body poisoned itself through its colon was generally accepted around the early 1900's, but was proved wrong in 1919 by Alvarez WC and again in 1922 by Donaldson AN after scientific testing showed otherwise.

If you're interested in reading more on colonics Click Here.