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You might find this interesting:
http://www.dcscience.net/Giger...

""
The application of statistics to science is not a neutral act. Statistical tools have shaped and
were also shaped by its objects. In the social sciences, statistical methods fundamentally
changed research practice, making statistical inference its centerpiece. At the same time, textbook writers in the social sciences have transformed rivaling statistical systems into an apparently monolithic method that could be used mechanically. The idol of a universal method for
scientific inference has been worshiped since the âoeinference revolutionâ of the 1950s. Because
no such method has ever been found, surrogates have been created, most notably the quest for
significant p values. This form of surrogate science fosters delusions and borderline cheating
and has done much harm, creating, for one, a flood of irreproducible results. Proponents of the
âoeBayesian revolutionâ should be wary of chasing yet another chimera: an apparently universal
inference procedure. A better path would be to promote both an understanding of the various
devices in the âoestatistical toolboxâ and informed judgment to select among these.
""

I can cite many big names in science and many of the major journals that are all worried about a growing trend towards pseudo science.

A lot of it has to do with data driven science where in a data set is taken in and the whole study is just the analysis of the data. A core aspect of science is that at some point in the study there is supposed to be a "reality check". And many studies don't have any such thing in them... this worrying trend of not being able to reproduce results of published studies or various models when push comes to shove not being able to actually predict or model anything outside of the set piece of the study's data.

I'm no where near stupid. I won't defer to people that I see as increasingly compromised and who have a very poor track record of actually being able to predict or verify anything.

If that makes me a bad person or a fool... Then I wear that badge with pride with the proper attributions cited.

The Cochrane foundation has a good collection of meta studies which seems to not contradict that acupuncture isn't more effective than placebo.

If you are not trolling here is one of them

Antioxidents are an interesting idea. A whole industry has built up around their healthy properties. However, it transpired that the only evidence of their efficacy was adding various compounds to cells in a petri dish. There was no evidence any of this actually worked when swallowed and ingested. Some further research was done recently and could find no evidence that taking these products actually had any affect at all on reducing your chances of getting cancer. For citation purposes, check http://www.dcscience.net/?p=90 and Ben Goldacre's work.

follow the money... So who benefits financially?

Just because someone benefits doesn't mean they're the reason it happened. Example: Just because some sham homeopathic medicine doesn't get government approval doesn't mean that the conventional medicine industry was behind their failure. (Even worse, some homeopaths have "prescribed" homeopathic malaria vaccines [read: totally ineffective] for people going to Africa: http://www.dcscience.net/?p=22) Another example would be, that if your friend and his girlfriend break up, and you start dating her, then you must've caused the breakup to happen because "you're the one who benefited".

Most importantly has been the secondary effects. Lots of people have written about this, exposing stuff that the BCA would not like to be exposed, such as The patheticness of their claims. The The Advertising Standards Authority upheld a complaint about bogus advertising for a chiropractor who said he could cure colic, and after this every UK chiropractor with a website has had that website closely examined, and if it contains anything objectionable then there have been complaints to the local trading standards and the GCC. Ultimately the McTimoney Chiropractic Association told all of it's members to totally remove their websites.

Do you really think the BCS considers this a victory?

"Exaggerated claims for the efficacy of a medicament are very seldom the consequence of any intention to deceive; they are usually the outcome of a kindly conspiracy in which everybody has the very best intentions. The patient wants to get well, his physician wants to have made him better, and the pharmaceutical company would have liked to have put it into the physician's power to have made him so. The controlled clinical trial is an attempt to avoid being taken in by this conspiracy of good will."

(From Advice to a Young Scientist, published in 1979.)
See this great site.

...at least for the growing number of UK 'universities' offering Homeopathy etc. BSc courses. Not an easy sell to students equipped with a basic knowledge of chemistry.

http://dcscience.net/?p=454
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=403123&c=1
http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=404104&c=2
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/Pharmacology/dc-bits/dcpubs.html#fun1 [DC's Nature article, "Science degrees without the science" available here]

Make sure you don't send your kids (or yourselves) to any of these disreputable UK establishments:

http://www.thinkhumanism.com/files/UCAS%20Courses%20on%20quackery.xls [List of UK universities offering fraudulent 'science' degree courses]