homeopathy
oracknows | August 1, 2013After a brief foray yesterday into discussing atheism, tone deafness, and the Holocaust (how's that for an odd combination?), I'm ready to get back to more—shall we say?—conventional topics. One topic that's been popping up at that other wretched hive of scum and antivaccine quackery (one of the ones other than Age of Autism) reveals something about the antivaccine movement that I find educational. Specifically, it has to do with how, once a parent has drunk deeply of the antivaccine Kool Aid, she behaves in a rather cult-like manner. I'll show you what I mean, and the post that best…
oracknows | July 18, 2013I've often (perhaps too often) referred to homeopathy as The One Quackery To Rule Them All. If not homeopathy, what other quackery would rule? Homeopathy is, after all, the perfect quackery. Most of its most "potent" remedies are nothing more than water, because homeopaths believe that the more a solution is serially diluted (with succussion, or vigorous shaking, between each serial dilution), the more potent it becomes, and frequently dilute their solutions far beyond the point where it is likely that there is even one molecule of the original substance in the resulting homeopathic dilution…
oracknows | June 28, 2013A little more than a week ago, I took note of Dr. Paul Offit's new book, Do You Believe in Magic? The Sense and Nonsense of Alternative Medicine and a story in which he was featured in USA Today about the nonsense that is alternative medicine. The news story coincided with the release of Paul Offit's book, which of course led me to express my admiration for not only Offit's ability to write good books about topics that interest me but to garner the publicity of a major story in a national newspaper published the same day his book was released. No wonder he drives the antivaccine lunatic…
oracknows | May 19, 2013That naturopathy is a veritable cornucopia of quackery mixed with the odd sensible, science-based suggestion here and there is not in doubt, at least not to supporters of science-based medicine (SBM). However, what naturopaths are very good at doing is representing their pseudoscience as somehow being scientific and thus on par with actual SBM. So how do they accomplish this? Certainly, it's not through the validation of any of the cornucopia of pseudoscience and quackery that naturopaths apply to their patients as though picking "one from column A and one from column B" from a proverbial…
oracknows | April 24, 2013I've written about naturopathy many times before. The reasons that it interests me are several. First, it amazes me how anyone "discipline" (if you want to call it that) can encompass so many forms of quackery, some of which are mutually contradictory. (For instance, how can homeopathy and traditional Chinese medicine both be true?) Also, it's amazing how deeply steeped in prescientific vitalism naturopathy is. Then, of course, there's its tight embrace of The One Quackery To Rule Them All, homeopathy. There are times when I feel as though it's just too easy, as homeopathy is nothing more…
oracknows | March 20, 2013Heidi Stevenson amuses me.
The reasons are legion. Be it the time when Heidi lectured scientists on anecdotal evidence (which she values far more highly than scientists, of course, declaring it the "basis of all knowledge"); launched a vile and nonsensical attack on Stephen Barrett; argued against prior plausibility with using a straw man argument so massive that if it were set on fire (which she did) it could be seen from space; or made an even more idiotic argument to try to "prove" that wi-fi signals and EMF cause autism, Heidi never fails to deliver the stupid in mass quantities of black…
oracknows | March 15, 2013It's been a long time, been a long time, been a long lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely time.
Besides indulging my taste for shamelessly working lyrics from Led Zeppelin and other classic bands into my post, what am I talking about? Simple. Things have been way too serious lately. I mean, just look at yesterday's post. Sure, I framed it semi-humorously, with The Evil Skeptics infiltrating the screening of the Burzynski sequel, but part of the reason that I did that is because the subject matter is so unrelentingly depressing. That's why when a reader sent me a link to the victim target subject of…
oracknows | March 1, 2013I really hate to write this post, but I feel compelled. The reason I hate to write it is because someone I admire screwed up. The reason I feel compelled is because of my longstanding interest in World War II and Holocaust history, not to mention my longtime interest in refuting the lies of Holocaust deniers. I had meant to write about it the first time I came across it, but for some reason did not. I don't remember the reason, although it might very well be because of how much I respect the person who wrote it. Again, I don't remember, and today it really doesn't matter why. Whatever the…
oracknows | December 30, 2012Homeopathy amuses me. Homeopaths amuse me as well, which is why I'm resurrecting this post. It was originally published elsewhere a few years ago and somehow never crossposted here. So if it seems a bit dated, fear not; Orac hasn't fired up his Tarial cells and managed to go back in time. Now, I realize that lately, due to my work schedule, I've had a tendency to crosspost too much between this blog and my other less "insolent" blogging locale. I know that and plan to try to do much less of it in 2013.
But it's not 2013, and I'm still sort of on vacation.
Besides, I have a very good reason to…
oracknows | December 16, 2012I realize that I've said it many times before, but it bears repeating. Homeopathy is the perfect quackery. The reason that homeopathy is so perfect as a form of quackery is because it is quite literally nothing. On second thought, I suppose that it's not exactly nothing. It is, after all, water or whatever other diluent that homeopaths use (usually ethanol). However, thanks to some basic laws of physics and chemistry and a little thing known as Avagadro's number, any homeopathic dilution greater than 12C (twelve serial 100-fold dilutions) is incredibly unlikely to contain even a single…
oracknows | December 13, 2012Note: Orac is away somewhere warm recharging his Tarial cells for further science and skepticism. In the meantime, he is rerunning some of his favorite posts. Because it's vacation, he thought he'd rerun a fun post. He needs it; vacation is almost over, and it's back to work on Monday. So, here's one from 2007. I believe I reran it once a few years ago, but it's been at least three years, which means that if you haven't been reading at least that long it's new to you. Besides, it's the post that introduced me to the woo-tastic wonder that it Lionel Milgrom.
While thinking about ways to make…
oracknows | November 18, 2012One of the great benefits of having been a blogger for nearly eight years now is that I now have a rich history of thousands of posts. True, there are the occasional posts that I wish I hadn't written and even the occasional post that I consider to be not particularly good, but for the most part I'm proud of my work and would put my blog posts up against nearly anyone else's. Another benefit of having such a long history is that, from time to time, I get the opportunity to revisit really old posts. Having written about these issues for so long, I find it really gratifying when I can revisit a…
oracknows | November 14, 2012It wasn't so long ago (less than a week, actually), that I noticed what I referred to as a paean to the quackery known as naturopathy. It appeared—where else?—on that wretched hive of scum and quackery known at The Huffington Post. It was even entitled My Love Affair with Naturopathy. Not unexpectedly, this very article revealed just what quacks naturopaths are, as it told the story of a woman with vague symptoms, "messed up menstrual cycles," and other complaints who went to a naturopath and was blown away by the "personalized" attention and even more happy that this particular naturopath…
oracknows | November 12, 2012"Holistic."
How often do we hear that word bandied about by practitioners of "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) or, as it's increasingly called, "integrative medicine" (IM)? Lots. The reason is that CAM/IM practitioners seem to think they own the word. They've so utterly co-opted it that it has become meaningless, in the process perverting it. No longer does it mean "taking care of the whole person." Not really, at least not anymore. Thanks to quacks having taken possession of it as their own, "holistic" now has a connotation of woo, in which it is said to be impossible to be a…
oracknows | September 17, 2012Homeopathy is what I like to call The One Quackery To Rule Them All. Depending upon my mood, I'll use more or less of J.R.R. Tolkien's famous poem about the One Ring from The Lord of the Rings, but the point is usually made. Homeopathy is major quackery.
And it is, too. On the off chance that there's a newbie reading this who hasn't been a regular reader of this blog or other skeptical blogs and doesn't know what homeopathy is. (Regulars can skip this paragraph if they wish, but I wouldn't. It's entertaining.) Basically, homeopathy is a system of magical medicine thought up over 200 years ago…
oracknows | September 10, 2012One of the overarching issues, if not the overarching issue that makes so-called "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM)—or, as it's now more commonly called, "integrative medicine"—so problematic is prior plausibility. It's also one of the most difficult to explain to the lay public, because to someone not trained in science it can sound like not being open-minded. I like to joke about this whole concept by saying that it's good to be open-minded but not so open-minded that your brains fall out. In other words, the main difference between science-based medicine (SBM) and evidence-…
oracknows | July 25, 2012Medical therapies should be based upon science. That is a recurrent theme, indeed, the major theme, of this blog. Based on that simple thesis, I've spent the last decade examining "unconventional" treatments and evaluating the scientific basis (or, much more usually, the lack of a scientific basis) for various treatments. Yes, I've looked at other issues, including general skeptical issues, the occasional political rant, Holocaust denial, and, of course the odd self-indulgent bit of twaddle that every blogger engages in every now and then, but I always come back to the question of the…
oracknows | June 29, 2012Remember California Bill AB 2109? I've written about it at least a couple of times before. In fact, for some reason, the comment section of this post on AB 2109 suddenly come alive again a couple of days ago, with antivaccinationists infiltrating it, much to the annoyance of my regular commenters. It turns out that the reason was that a couple of days ago AB 2109 came up for discussion in the California Senate Health Committee (and passed to be sent out to the full Senate for a vote), after having passed the California House a couple of months ago. I also now know why antivaccinationists…
oracknows | June 26, 2012No matter how you slice it, I've been at this blogging thing a long time. it's been over seven years now. It's been even longer than that, though, because before that cold gray Saturday afternoon in September when I started farting around with Blogger and ended giving birth to the first iteration of Respectful Insolence, I had been sparring with quacks, cranks, and various other promoters of pseudoscience for at least five years before. Even after all that time, however, it's humbling and amazing to contemplate that I haven't seen it all, no matter how much at times I might feel that I have.…
oracknows | June 7, 2012I've lost track of how many times over the last 7 years I've mentioned that naturopathy is not science-based. The evidence is overwhelming. All you have to do is to took at the wide variety of quackery that fits comfortably into naturopathic practice to realize that most of naturopathy is quackery. Traditional Chinese medicine? Check. Various "energy healing"? Check. "Detoxification" woo? Check. Homeopathy?
Check.
I brought up this point last year when I pointed out that you can't have naturopathy without homeopathy. I based this assessment on the fact that not only his homeopathy a required…