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FWIW, grape juice should also do the trick.

Not according to this: http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/ DSH/resveratrol.html

This isn't any different than the phantom console, magnets which supposedly help your arthritis or whatever book that Kevin Trudeau is bilking people into buying claiming this is information that the government doesn't want you to know about.

This shouldn't surprise anyone. Not the least of which that there are VC idiots who will gladly pony up the money for a non-existant, never-to-be-made product simply because it has oodles of neat sounding words in its description.

*PT Barnum never actually said those words but people routinely attribute the phrase to him.

Google 1, search engine spammers 0.

Quackwatch

Quackwatch
Professor Protests
Warning Signs of Chiropractic foolery
Wikipedia Article

Chiropractic is pseudoscientific horseshit. While it's true that some chiropractors are merely back massagers, the majority believe in the strange teachings of their school. Some excerpts:

"Chiropractic was founded in 1895 by Daniel David Palmer, a grocer and "magnetic healer" who believed that all diseases are the result of misplaced spinal bones. According to his theory, "subluxations" (misalignment) of spinal vertebrae cause disease by interfering with the flow of "nerve energy" from the brain to the body's tissue cells. Spinal "adjustments," by restoring vertebrae to their "proper places," allow brain energy to heal the diseased condition."

"Nerve conduction studies of human spinal nerves identified as being subluxed by chiropractors were shown to be normal by conventional scientific measures. Studies involving X-ray and CT scanning of the human spine before and after chiropractic manipulation show no changes in joint position as identified by radiologists."

"Aside from placebo effect chiropractic therapy has never been shown to treat any condition other than musculoskeletal problems."

Chiropractic has never been shown to have ANY verifiable effect on ANY condition. Not only is it useless, it can often be dangerous. In fact, if you can find a chiropractor who can provide actual evidence of the practice's efficacy, or even of a simple "subluxation," you'll be eligible for the JREF's One Million Dollar award.

Penn and Teller did a succinct expose on the dangers of chiropractic on their show "Bullshit."

The ol' invisible hand would rapidly solve the problem of assigning an appropriate value to every article and every author in the Wikipedia.

Yeah, right. Like it assigns an "appropriate value" to ear candles, RAM optimizers and penis enlargment pills.

Evidence aside, one of the PREREQUISITES for market forces to work as you believe they do is that all participants have perfect information - but the validity of the information itelf is what's being judged here! You're expecing something akin to pulling yourself up into the air by your own bootstraps.

The NCCAM is not real science.

http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/ nccam.html

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/altm ed/snake/evidence.html

Also, search within this page for NCCAM
http://www.randi.org/jr/042602.html

And that's just skimming the surface.

The NCCAM is a bunch of quackery and pseudoscience. The most you will ever get from acupuncture, reflexology, chiropracty or any other bullshit is the placebo effect. If anyone claims that any of these things are real, as them why they haven't won the million dollar challenge.

But don't believe me just on my word. Do your own research. Use google. Go to the library. Read what real scientists and various studies say about the NCCAM and the bs that is most alternative medicine. When you are done, you will become as enraged as I am that your tax dollars are spent funding this crap instead of working on real medicine.

There are lots and lots of Doctors (and not necessarily Medical Doctors, this includes physicists, biologists, etc.) that subscribe to some of these quackery beliefs, not even limited to simply reflexology or acupuncture. Dowsing, astrology, HOMEOPATHY all that stuff is just as unproven and fake as the next. The belief in some of these things even falls down to psychological factors (such as the ideomotor effect (2) with regards to dowsing, and placebo effect for most - if not all - alternative medicine practices). It's interesting how a physicist can believe that dowsing really works, but they are out there!

In the case of the "traditional chinese medicine", the arguement is that it has been around for 2000 years So It Must Work!. Unfortunately, just cause it's been around for a long time, doesn't mean it works either.

Aside from the personal/psychological influences that cause people to follow these things, a huge factor are the people marketing the products and therapies.

Snake oil charmers tend to be able to sell this stuff by scaring people with lies. Fear that the "industry" is out to get you. Fear that "drugs" are poisoning you. It's easy to get someone to believe that there are conspiracies (that are conveniently unprovable) working against them and that the only way out is their form of alternative medicine.

A lot of people lured to alternative medicine are done so because they feel they have been somehow wronged by the MD profession. Like they believe they have a true illness that MDs can't locate/cure (because it doesn't exist). So they go to a naturopath who is only too happy to say "Of course there's something wrong with you! Now that will be $50 a week for therapy plus $35 a month for my homeopathic pills. Don't worry, they are 100x diluted so they are SUPER-effective!". Lots of alternative medicine practitioners even go so far as to claim you have an illness you don't know about, and that only they can cure it! Colonix for example is one such thing, as well as people who say you should be taking TONS of vitamin supplements for various reasons. Anyone heard of magnet therapy (Quackwatch Info)?

The sad thing about it all, is that it's difficult to combat with logic and sense. You say "but its not proven" and they say "You just have to believe!" or "So-and-so said it worked, so it must! I don't care if science says it doesn't".

If you go to http://quackwatch.org/ there is an insane amount of information there with regards to how people get sucked in to this stuff.

There are lots and lots of Doctors (and not necessarily Medical Doctors, this includes physicists, biologists, etc.) that subscribe to some of these quackery beliefs, not even limited to simply reflexology or acupuncture. Dowsing, astrology, HOMEOPATHY all that stuff is just as unproven and fake as the next. The belief in some of these things even falls down to psychological factors (such as the ideomotor effect (2) with regards to dowsing, and placebo effect for most - if not all - alternative medicine practices). It's interesting how a physicist can believe that dowsing really works, but they are out there!

In the case of the "traditional chinese medicine", the arguement is that it has been around for 2000 years So It Must Work!. Unfortunately, just cause it's been around for a long time, doesn't mean it works either.

Aside from the personal/psychological influences that cause people to follow these things, a huge factor are the people marketing the products and therapies.

Snake oil charmers tend to be able to sell this stuff by scaring people with lies. Fear that the "industry" is out to get you. Fear that "drugs" are poisoning you. It's easy to get someone to believe that there are conspiracies (that are conveniently unprovable) working against them and that the only way out is their form of alternative medicine.

A lot of people lured to alternative medicine are done so because they feel they have been somehow wronged by the MD profession. Like they believe they have a true illness that MDs can't locate/cure (because it doesn't exist). So they go to a naturopath who is only too happy to say "Of course there's something wrong with you! Now that will be $50 a week for therapy plus $35 a month for my homeopathic pills. Don't worry, they are 100x diluted so they are SUPER-effective!". Lots of alternative medicine practitioners even go so far as to claim you have an illness you don't know about, and that only they can cure it! Colonix for example is one such thing, as well as people who say you should be taking TONS of vitamin supplements for various reasons. Anyone heard of magnet therapy (Quackwatch Info)?

The sad thing about it all, is that it's difficult to combat with logic and sense. You say "but its not proven" and they say "You just have to believe!" or "So-and-so said it worked, so it must! I don't care if science says it doesn't".

If you go to http://quackwatch.org/ there is an insane amount of information there with regards to how people get sucked in to this stuff.

There are lots and lots of Doctors (and not necessarily Medical Doctors, this includes physicists, biologists, etc.) that subscribe to some of these quackery beliefs, not even limited to simply reflexology or acupuncture. Dowsing, astrology, HOMEOPATHY all that stuff is just as unproven and fake as the next. The belief in some of these things even falls down to psychological factors (such as the ideomotor effect (2) with regards to dowsing, and placebo effect for most - if not all - alternative medicine practices). It's interesting how a physicist can believe that dowsing really works, but they are out there!

In the case of the "traditional chinese medicine", the arguement is that it has been around for 2000 years So It Must Work!. Unfortunately, just cause it's been around for a long time, doesn't mean it works either.

Aside from the personal/psychological influences that cause people to follow these things, a huge factor are the people marketing the products and therapies.

Snake oil charmers tend to be able to sell this stuff by scaring people with lies. Fear that the "industry" is out to get you. Fear that "drugs" are poisoning you. It's easy to get someone to believe that there are conspiracies (that are conveniently unprovable) working against them and that the only way out is their form of alternative medicine.

A lot of people lured to alternative medicine are done so because they feel they have been somehow wronged by the MD profession. Like they believe they have a true illness that MDs can't locate/cure (because it doesn't exist). So they go to a naturopath who is only too happy to say "Of course there's something wrong with you! Now that will be $50 a week for therapy plus $35 a month for my homeopathic pills. Don't worry, they are 100x diluted so they are SUPER-effective!". Lots of alternative medicine practitioners even go so far as to claim you have an illness you don't know about, and that only they can cure it! Colonix for example is one such thing, as well as people who say you should be taking TONS of vitamin supplements for various reasons. Anyone heard of magnet therapy (Quackwatch Info)?

The sad thing about it all, is that it's difficult to combat with logic and sense. You say "but its not proven" and they say "You just have to believe!" or "So-and-so said it worked, so it must! I don't care if science says it doesn't".

If you go to http://quackwatch.org/ there is an insane amount of information there with regards to how people get sucked in to this stuff.

"Thinking critically" also means being skeptical of the claims of current medical orthodoxy - looking at the actual evidence rather than being swayed by name-calling.

You are exactly right, however I don't see how that was relevant in my post, or in this thread, as we are not disputing medical practice. I never said that quacks didn't exist in every line of practice. However I will say that anyone practicing acupuncture or reflexology is a quack.

Reflexology has nothing to do with Chinese Medicine.

I didn't mention reflexology together with chinese medicine for no reason. RTFA. Excerpt: "Cobblestone-like walking paths are common in China. The activity is rooted in traditional Chinese medicine and relates to some of the principles of reflexology, in that the uneven surface of the cobblestones stimulate and regulate "acupoints" located on the soles of the feet."

Many pracitioners of Chinese Medicine don't care much about trying to find a Western Medicine explanation for how acupuncture

Whether they care or not doesn't mean it works just because they believe in it. Proof of acupuncture is anecdotal at best, there is absolutely no proof that such techniques are scientifically sound.

Sure there have been lots of "studies" done on acupuncture claiming that it Really Works, however none of which were appropriate in controlling placebo and other factors such as blinding.

They see it work every day, that's enough for them.

But what about all the times that it doesn't work? And there are many. The trouble with things like this is people focus more on the times they succeed and tend to forget about all the times that things failed.

(The same can be said of many Western physicians, a surprising number of whom have little interest or knowledge of biology.)

The CM model is very much a functional, not a structural, one; the Vital Substances, the Zang-Fu organs, and the meridians are best understood by what they do, not by chopping people up looking for them.

You don't have to chop people up to look for meridians. You simply have to submit the practice to a real scientific double blind-placebo controlled test. Fancy that, here is an example: http://www.annals.org/cgi/content/abstract/143/1/1 0

For some real information see http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/ acu.html

To quote:

The National Council Against Health Fraud has concluded:

• Acupuncture is an unproven modality of treatment.
• Its theory and practice are based on primitive and fanciful concepts of health and disease that bear no relationship to present scientific knowledge
• Research during the past 20 years has not demonstrated that acupuncture is effective against any disease.
• Perceived effects of acupuncture are probably due to a combination of expectation, suggestion, counter-irritation, conditioning, and other psychologic mechanisms.
• The use of acupuncture should be restricted to appropriate research settings, Insurance companies should not be required by law to cover acupuncture treatment, Licensure of lay acupuncturists should be phased out.
• Consumers who wish to try acupuncture should discuss their situation with a knowledgeable physician who has no commercial interest [20].

Whether this "cobblestone" crap actually works I have no idea, but if it is rooted in "reflexology" and "traditional chinese medicine" then I'd have to bet that there will never be any truly scientific studies that prove this product.

The more likely explanation is that these people age 60+ that they tested are actually WALKING, as opposed to sitting around. Not to mention the likely placebo effect of being told "walk these cobblestones, they make you feel better!"

For more information on Reflexology, please see:

http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/ reflex.html

And remember folks, think critically. Anything that advertises itself using "accupressure" or "hidden pathways" is bunk.

Add to the list:
colloidal silver: bad

ummm.. and I would still put tanning into the "bad" category. A vitamin D supplement is all you need to counter any lack of it, but malignant melanoma is a bit trickier to get rid of.

I suggest you visit this site. http://www.quackwatch.org/03HealthPromotion/immu/t himerosal.html

Chelation to treat autism is about as useful as a tinfoil hat. Why would you take the word of a site that is clearly for the Chelation industry?

Are you sure?

A 14-person panel of experts urged more research on autism but said further pursuit of possible links between vaccines and the devastating neurological disorder is probably not worth the money and effort. Reports published in 2001 by the same committee found no connection between the MMR vaccine and autism, and insufficient evidence to draw conclusions about thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative added to multiple-dose vials of vaccine. Since then, enough new studies have been published to confidently reject both theories, the panel said. Especially convincing were a Danish study showing no difference in the rate of autism between children who got thimerosal-containing vaccines and those who did not and a British study showing no relationship between the introduction of MMR and autism rates, or between the timing of a vaccination and the onset of autism symptoms. "The vaccine hypotheses are not currently supported by the evidence," wrote the panel, which consisted of physicians, neuroscientists, epidemiologists, statisticians and a nurse.

Skeptism is how science progresses. If you have read the "Structure of Scientific Revolutions" (had to do it for a class), you would see this is how science is forwarded. That said, studies has been published in both Europe and the U.S. clearly showing no link. Skeptism, when shown to be unfounded needs to be put to rest. Literally millions of lives have been saved by vaccination programs worldwide.

The current theory favored by many experts is that autism is a genetically-based disorder that occurs before birth.
Studies of persons with autism are finding abnormalities in brain structures that develop in the first few weeks of fetal development.

The original report, published in the Lancet in 1995 included a editorial piece criticizing it, partly due to its very small study population (12 patients). Another facet of the story that is oft left out of the discussion is that the hypothesis, which had no data associated with it, was that perhaps the MMR vaccination prevents gut absorption of minerals and vitamins which caused the autism.

Anyway, there is alot of data involving this, which I have referenced below. I would like to note that I have been taking this primarily from a piece written by Dr. Barrett. The collection is quite complete and slightly longish. Have a go at it.

References

• A question of harm. CNN & Time broadcast, Oct 3, 1999.
• Liam's mother Shelley H. Reynolds founded and serves as president of Little Angels, an organization intended to "bring the issues of autism from individual homes to the forefront of national dialogue." Dr. Cave is a board member described on the Web site as "a leader and a fighter for the alternative therapies that seem to work with many of our children. She believes in using drugs as a last resort, concentr

Yes, they sell a reasonable number of them. But then, the Sharper Image makes most of its profits from an air cleaner that doesn't work.

The web also has a lot of quacks selling products based on bogus research/information on "proper nutrition and workout techniques." Browser beware.

Nutrition is about 80% of it. If you want a nice quick recipe without doing much research, check out this.

That link has a nice summary of James Jordan's "Underground Mass Building Secrets." However, for a good laugh, check out the product's web page. My favorite part:

Look, if you're:

Sick and tired of being made fun of because you weigh about as much as a petite girl.

Angry that you have such a bony body girls would laugh at you should you take off your t-shirt.

Infuriated that girls instantly want your "buff" friends but are never interested in you.

Pissed off about how much hard painstaking work you've put into long workouts for nothing.

So outraged by how worthless all the supplements you've wasted your money on that you feel like beating someone up!

If this is you then.....

"Here's What It Really Takes For Skinny Guy's To Get Big-Bulging Muscles In Just 4 Weeks - With No Un-Natural Supplements - Lifting 3 Times A Week - With No Single Workout Lasting More Than 45 Minutes!"

Needless to say, Sharper Image was pissed and sued them. They lost big time. In fact, Sharper Image has to pay the Consumer Union $525,000 for their court costs.

Check out here and here.

That Bates guy was discredited a long time ago... his methods were pretty poor.
http://www.quackwatch.org/11Ind/bates.html

I know it is just statitistics and bell curves and whatnot rearing it's ugly head. I heard it best put as "it would be a much bigger coincidence if there were no conicidences." I remember doing an excercise in stats class on birthdays and finding out that a lot of people shared the same birthday. Then we did the math and found that it takes a group of about twenty people for there to be a 50% chance that two people shared a birthday.

But knowing that still doesn't make it feel any less wierd how much my MP3 CD player "liked" to play a LOT of Björk when I had her on mixes that were put on random (the way I almost always like to listen to music.) It felt like almost every other song was Björk. Creepy. And much less than half the songs were Björk songs.

I guess neat quirks like that are why I like random so much and am really considering getting an Ipod Shuffle. I mean, that would so fit with my musical listening style. Load a random batch of songs on, put em on shuffle and go. Plugging it in to copy new songs to it would probably be about as regular of a task as plugging in my cell phone, so I don't even really think I'd need the full gig model as I could generally go several weeks on one MP3 mix cd without getting annoyed.

On another note, it can be really fun to add the sound samples from video games into a random play list. Always makes life a little more surreal to be rockin' out to some music and then being slapped with "It is every citizen's final duty to go into the tanks and become one with all the people." "Eternity lies ahead of us, and behind. Have you drunk your fill?" or "Organic Superlube? Oh, it's great stuff, great stuff. You really have to keep an eye on it, though--it'll try and slide away from you the first chance it gets." Okay, I think you get the picture that I have Alpha Centauri in that random list right now.

In other words, graphology is BS and the people who analyzed it already had a preconceived notion about whose it was and made the appropriate BS analyses.

Graphology is just as laughable as astrology, acupuncture or homeopathy. Here's a nice experiment for your amusement: when you meet a "graphologist" who'd like to demonstrate her amazing "skills" to you, be sure to make an experiment using text copied from some newspaper, the same text written by all of the tested people who had no contact with the graphologist before and during the handwriting examination at all. Observing the graphologist's face when she doesn't have "side channels data" and no interaction with people to play with "cold reading" is a trully hilarious experience.

"This shape might sometimes mean that maybe some kind of a impatience... am I right?"
"Just keep going, I don't want to disturb you!"

And the most funny thing is that unlike psychics they can't just make up some dumb excuses that they feel some disturbance of Force or that the Angels are scared by the camera, because they are supposed to be scientists. Looking at someone's writing you can usually tell the gender and age--the same I can guess reading someone's palm... Or foot... Or arse! Does it make me an arsologist?

For more interesting informations read: Wikipedia article on graphology, James Randi's comments on graphology (by The Amazing Randi of JREF who offers "a one-million-dollar prize to anyone who can show, under proper observing conditions, evidence of any paranormal, supernatural, or occult power or event"), graphology in the Skeptic's Dictionary by Robert T. Carroll, PhD, and of course the excellent Quackwatch paper How Graphology Fools People by Barry L. Beyerstein, PhD. This is not the first time we can laugh at psedoscientific morons on Slashdot thanks to The Amazing Randi.

And a comment to CmdrTaco: please add the Monty Python foot to the article because without it we look like a bunch of imbeciles. What next? Bill Gates tested by the lie detector and a story posted on science.slashdot.org? Please just add the foot. Thanks.

In other words, graphology is BS and the people who analyzed it already had a preconceived notion about whose it was and made the appropriate BS analyses.

Graphology is just as laughable as astrology, acupuncture or homeopathy. Here's a nice experiment for your amusement: when you meet a "graphologist" who'd like to demonstrate her amazing "skills" to you, be sure to make an experiment using text copied from some newspaper, the same text written by all of the tested people who had no contact with the graphologist before and during the handwriting examination at all. Observing the graphologist's face when she doesn't have "side channels data" and no interaction with people to play with "cold reading" is a trully hilarious experience.

"This shape might sometimes mean that maybe some kind of a impatience... am I right?"
"Just keep going, I don't want to disturb you!"

And the most funny thing is that unlike psychics they can't just make up some dumb excuses that they feel some disturbance of Force or that the Angels are scared by the camera, because they are supposed to be scientists. Looking at someone's writing you can usually tell the gender and age--the same I can guess reading someone's palm... Or foot... Or arse! Does it make me an arsologist?

For more interesting informations read: Wikipedia article on graphology, James Randi's comments on graphology (by The Amazing Randi of JREF who offers "a one-million-dollar prize to anyone who can show, under proper observing conditions, evidence of any paranormal, supernatural, or occult power or event"), graphology in the Skeptic's Dictionary by Robert T. Carroll, PhD, and of course the excellent Quackwatch paper How Graphology Fools People by Barry L. Beyerstein, PhD. This is not the first time we can laugh at psedoscientific morons on Slashdot thanks to The Amazing Randi.

And a comment to CmdrTaco: please add the Monty Python foot to the article because without it we look like a bunch of imbeciles. What next? Bill Gates tested by the lie detector and a story posted on science.slashdot.org? Please just add the foot. Thanks.

I am sure that none of us would want to hear any jitter that sounds like ass--i.e. like this--but that doesn't mean that any of us would buy a $1900.00 USB cable. Also, the USB power is strong enough to power the iGrill (which is great, by the way, because now I don't have to carry around the bulky Zero-Point generator while I'm hunting when I have a laptop anyway), so we also don't have to worry about the power line impedance so much, unless we use kilometres long USB cables, which is not so popular as it used to be with null modems any more, since we have an easy access to the Interweb.

Now seriously, I have noticed that people usually stop listening when I start talking about the "science stuff" so they don't really care if it is Fourier series or quantum cleaning of dirty electrons, since they don't listen anyway. As long as it sounds scientific, it is scientific, for all they care. And of course I must be lying to them because I am only their friend while the guy who just sold them a wooden potentiometer knob for $500 must be an expert, because otherwise he wouldn't have a job selling expensive equipment, right? Here the cognitive dissonance kicks in: "I am not a sucker, but I have just bought an ugly wooden knob for $500, therefore people who say that buying ugly wooden knobs for $500 is dumb must be mistaken."

Now, when they say that it was an "expert" in the audiophile store who has told them--or the "expert" in the Stereophile Magazine who has written--what they are telling you about, what they need here is a good ipse dixit and argumentum ad populum, for they won't listen to any other argument at all.

At that point, I usually shout at them: "Does Deutsche Grammophon use this junk to 'purify' their music while they record it? No? Then why on Earth do you think I need it to listen?! Now, will you excuse me, I need to drink my snake oil," and I leave in furious anger. Later when I talk to them, they sometimes ask me: "Are you serious that the record industry don't use such cables? Why?" To which I answer: "Because they are not bloody idiots, that's why! Do you need to spend millions on sound equipment? Then go to the recording studio, see what they use, and buy the same stuff. You will still be a sucker to buy something that you don't need, but at least you will have something that actually works."

It is surprisingly difficult to explain the truth to anyone who have bought audiophile lacquer or the wine clip, but it is still nothing compared to e.g. homeopathy or any other quackery when we are talking about peoples' health and lives, not just some useless junk. People will just not accept that they are suckers. Remember this story?

Here's my "alternative" article:

Seven warning signs of bogus science and Distinguishing science and pseudoscience".

> Why, then, can't we make these technological marvels safe?

"Pseudoscience begins with a hypothesis -- usually one which is appealing emotionally, and spectacularly implausible -- and then looks only for items which appear to support it."

> Of course, according to the cell phone industry, cell phones are perfectly harmless:

"2. The discoverer says that a powerful establishment is trying to suppress his or her work."

> "I have a list of about 600 research papers from the past ten years alone, 70 percent of which show definite effects from exposure to this kind of radiation," says Lai, "but the industry continues to say that there is nothing to worry about."

"2. The discoverer says that a powerful establishment is trying to suppress his or her work."

> What about cell phones and cancer, the most publicized concern? "Studies have been conducted to determine whether there is an association between cellular telephone use and an increased risk of certain types of cancer," according to the National Cancer Institute (NCI). "Although the majority of these studies have not supported any such association, scientists caution that more research needs to be done before conclusions can be drawn about the risk of cancer from cellular telephones."

OK, the only factual information here is that most studies do not support the alleged link.

> "Already there are at least 15,000 scientific reports on the subject. I am afraid the truth is that we don't want to know."

"2. The discoverer says that a powerful establishment is trying to suppress his or her work."

and a little bit of

"Pseudoscience attempts to persuade with rhetoric, propaganda, and misrepresentation rather than valid evidence (which presumably does not exist)."

> What has been shown in numerous studies, however, is that the radiation coming from cell phones does have measurable effects on brain cells that can lead to cancer, as well as neurological diseases.

3. The scientific effect involved is always at the very limit of detection.

> Says Lai, "Cumulative damages in DNA may in turn affect cell functions. DNA damage that accumulates in cells over a period of time may be the cause of slow onset diseases, such as cancer."

3. The scientific effect involved is always at the very limit of detection.

> However, the researcher explains, because nerve cells do not divide, they are less likely than other cells to become cancerous, which is typified by uncontrolled replication. Instead, if a brain cell accumulates too much DNA damage, it would more likely die. "Cumulative damage in DNA in cells also has been shown during aging," notes Lai. "Particularly, cumulative DNA damage in nerve cells of the brain has been associated with neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's, Huntington's, and Parkinson's diseases."

Pseudoscience makes extraordinary claims and advances fantastic theories that contradict what is known about nature.

Pseudoscientific "explanations" tend to be by scenario.

(If he can't prove cancer, he'll make up a scenario and a completely new hypothesis for the causes of these other diseases that existed before cell phones!)

> [ ... ] This study is especially significant because Hardell is a key witness in an $800 million lawsuit brought by Peter Angelos against the mobile phone industry. (Angelos is the la

Here's my "alternative" article:

Seven warning signs of bogus science and Distinguishing science and pseudoscience".

> Why, then, can't we make these technological marvels safe?

"Pseudoscience begins with a hypothesis -- usually one which is appealing emotionally, and spectacularly implausible -- and then looks only for items which appear to support it."

> Of course, according to the cell phone industry, cell phones are perfectly harmless:

"2. The discoverer says that a powerful establishment is trying to suppress his or her work."

> "I have a list of about 600 research papers from the past ten years alone, 70 percent of which show definite effects from exposure to this kind of radiation," says Lai, "but the industry continues to say that there is nothing to worry about."

"2. The discoverer says that a powerful establishment is trying to suppress his or her work."

> What about cell phones and cancer, the most publicized concern? "Studies have been conducted to determine whether there is an association between cellular telephone use and an increased risk of certain types of cancer," according to the National Cancer Institute (NCI). "Although the majority of these studies have not supported any such association, scientists caution that more research needs to be done before conclusions can be drawn about the risk of cancer from cellular telephones."

OK, the only factual information here is that most studies do not support the alleged link.

> "Already there are at least 15,000 scientific reports on the subject. I am afraid the truth is that we don't want to know."

"2. The discoverer says that a powerful establishment is trying to suppress his or her work."

and a little bit of

"Pseudoscience attempts to persuade with rhetoric, propaganda, and misrepresentation rather than valid evidence (which presumably does not exist)."

> What has been shown in numerous studies, however, is that the radiation coming from cell phones does have measurable effects on brain cells that can lead to cancer, as well as neurological diseases.

3. The scientific effect involved is always at the very limit of detection.

> Says Lai, "Cumulative damages in DNA may in turn affect cell functions. DNA damage that accumulates in cells over a period of time may be the cause of slow onset diseases, such as cancer."

3. The scientific effect involved is always at the very limit of detection.

> However, the researcher explains, because nerve cells do not divide, they are less likely than other cells to become cancerous, which is typified by uncontrolled replication. Instead, if a brain cell accumulates too much DNA damage, it would more likely die. "Cumulative damage in DNA in cells also has been shown during aging," notes Lai. "Particularly, cumulative DNA damage in nerve cells of the brain has been associated with neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's, Huntington's, and Parkinson's diseases."

Pseudoscience makes extraordinary claims and advances fantastic theories that contradict what is known about nature.

Pseudoscientific "explanations" tend to be by scenario.

(If he can't prove cancer, he'll make up a scenario and a completely new hypothesis for the causes of these other diseases that existed before cell phones!)

> [ ... ] This study is especially significant because Hardell is a key witness in an $800 million lawsuit brought by Peter Angelos against the mobile phone industry. (Angelos is the la

Sorry to reply to myself, but I felt I should add two things. First, here is another page that addresses a lot of the false claims made about connections between power lines and cancer. Second, there is fairly clear evidence that UV light causes cancer. Now clearly you have to go out in the sun sometimes (yes, even if you read /.), but you probably get some unnecessary exposure. The question is, should you be more worried about that than cell phones or power lines?

I heard this all the time when I worked at a natural foods store. I call bullshit. From QuackWatch.org:

It can be terrifying to believe that one's body is being poisoned by toxins from within. But if this were true, the human race would not have survived, 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."

Best link I could come up with on short notice.

That said, this anti-spam method sounds interesting. I've been Greylisting on my mailserver for a while now, and it's certainly helped. It would be interesting to compare & contrast and get some hard numbers on how well these (and other) approaches work.

The bastards at the AMA came up with the term "quack" to slander chiropractors.

Uh.... "slander"? Wake up, pal. Chiropractors are great for relieving pain, but some people make wild, crazy claims about what they can do. The chiropractors who claim to be able to treat cancer by cracking your back are quacks. The ones who are honest about what their techniques can do are not quacks.

And the AMA is not your enemy.

MCS doesn't exist and the "treatments" for it can be extreme and expensive.

Be Wary of the Lasik Vision Institute

It doesn't say that the surgery bit is bad, just that there are some pretty bad conflicts of interest. Mainly unlawful marketing practices. Hope this helps. :-)

Solid and persuasive evidence is, it seems, quite rare and extraordinary. For example in this case we have a breadth of anecdotal evidence but no quantifications - no statistics.

The phrase was popularized by Carl Sagan. Read a paper on it.

Both sites ran by a de-licensed psychiatrist... yea, he sounds like an authority all right!

Dr. Barrett is not "de-licensed," he is retired. If Tim Bolen can't tell the difference, hopefully you can.

All you have to do is read Bolen's foaming-at-the-mouth vitriol and compare it to Barrett's even-handed and well-reasoned articles to see who is the crackpot in this case!

Dr. Barrett's qualifications are there for anyone to see, Bolen's are non-existent. At least Barrett does his homework before saying his piece.

In return, the husband, who is a chiropractor, gave my wife and I a free adjustment. What other interesting services or benefits have people been able to get by bartering IT/programming services?

Along the same lines I've received snake oil, the Brooklyn Bridge, and all natural "enlargers." Plus I got these neat crystals that calm my aura... or something.

However, none of these compensations ever offered the possibility of a stroke. Are you sure the husband wasn't just trying to kill you because he thought you might have hit on his wife?

Chirobase

'Nuff said.

A 1996 poll of 1,000 adults found that 79% believed that spiritual faith can help people recover from disease [McNichol T. The new faith in medicine. USA Today, April 7, 1996, p 4.]. This idea is also popular among physicians. Although many studies have found associations between various measures of religiosity and health, no well-designed study has demonstrated that religious beliefs or prayer actually benefit health [Sloan RP, Bagiella E, Powell T. Religion, spirituality and medicine. Lancet 353:664-667, 1999. The full text of this article can be accessed online by registering at the Lancet Web site and going to the contents page of the Feb 20th issue.]. In fact, one well-designed study found just the opposite. The study involved patients whose progress was followed for nine months after discharge from a British hospital. They evaluated the outpatient records and the responses of 189 patients to questionnaires. the researchers concluded that the health status of patients with stronger spiritual beliefs were more than twice as likely to be unimproved or worse [King M, Speck P, Thomas A. The effect of spiritual beliefs on outcome from illness. Social Science & Medicine 48:1291-1299, 1999.]. Although some studies have found that churchgoers tend to be healthier and to live longer than nonchurchgoers, church attendance itself is unlikely to be responsible for the difference [Gorski T. Should religion and spiritual concerns be more influential in health care? No. Priorities 12(1):23-26, 41, 2000.]. [context]

--
Stephen Barrett, M.D.

I'm getting this second hand from my wife's oncologist, but there's a lot of evidence that positive thought by the patient has a significant effect on the treatment of cancer.

Could you please post some links to this evidence? Thanks.

Meanwhile some people could find this text interesting: Some Thoughts about Faith Healing by Stephen Barrett, M.D. This is the single most objective analysis I've found so far. If you (or anyone) have any related interesting links, please share with the rest of us. Thanks a lot.

Just for the record: I am an atheist with severe manic depression with paranoia and mild psychotic symptoms. This, or maybe there is a god but she just hates me... in which case I will be glad if I go to hell after I die, because that would mean I will still be. I just don't want to disappear... Fuck! I am getting terrified... Great...

I'm getting this second hand from my wife's oncologist, but there's a lot of evidence that positive thought by the patient has a significant effect on the treatment of cancer.

Could you please post some links to this evidence? Thanks.

Meanwhile some people could find this text interesting: Some Thoughts about Faith Healing by Stephen Barrett, M.D. This is the single most objective analysis I've found so far. If you (or anyone) have any related interesting links, please share with the rest of us. Thanks a lot.

Just for the record: I am an atheist with severe manic depression with paranoia and mild psychotic symptoms. This, or maybe there is a god but she just hates me... in which case I will be glad if I go to hell after I die, because that would mean I will still be. I just don't want to disappear... Fuck! I am getting terrified... Great...

I did a quick search and think this answers your questions. You can search for ADM price fixing and find lost more.

"Tell him he might have to wind up running human emotions under emulation if necessary.

Not knowing what the hell is wrong with him will stress him a lot more than having something, anything, he can deal with."

Maybe this is an improper or even crass question, but when exactly did it become popular for everyone to have a pet disorder? It's really quite pathetic. No one is a bit shy anymore, they have Asperger's syndrome, no one feels under the weather for a time, they have chronic fatigue syndrome, no one dreads going to work in a drab boring office tower, they suffer from sick building syndrome etc. If you want to teach him about Asperger's syndrome, do him a bigger favor and also teach him about how certain psychoanalytical trends have all the earmarks of fad diagnoses.

I submit that what you have proposed here is possibly the worst solution to a kids problem of shyness (even if it's to the point of 'painful' shyness). Telling him: you have X syndrome, you better learn to deal with it now so you can start spending the rest of your life "running human emotions under emulation" is downright depressing and gives him an excuse to throw his hands up and essentially absolve himself of any personal responsibility to remedy his situation.

Would it not be better to provide guidance on how to have REAL relationships with people, find friends of his own interest and maybe gradually introduce him to participation in fun activities with his own peer group??

If ozone is the problem and it is generated by the electric field, then most of the studies done so far are irrelevant because they never measured electric field strengths. This will be rather difficult to study, as the lungs are most susceptible to ozone, and contributions to lung problems from smoking and air pollution will have to be subtracted. Smoking correlates with poverty level, and poverty level and the proximity of major roadways correlate well with each other and with the placement of high-voltage lines. It's going to be a huge statistical mess.

Note that I'm not worried enough to step away from the computer....

There are many studies out there about the inefficient conversion of ALA To EPA and DHA in people with ADHD, leading me to believe that pumping your kid full of stimulants is a (very) wrong answer.

Its listed here - Mental Help: Procedures to Avoid
(You'll have to scroll down the page a bit. Its two spaces up from Past-Life Therapy.)

Its listed here - Mental Help: Procedures to Avoid
(You'll have to scroll down the page a bit. Its two spaces up from Past-Life Therapy.)

There are also Quacks who sell Books and Bogus Cures based on Bogus Claims and Bad Science.

Here is a good place to start if you'd like to understand why Chelation Therapy and Homeopathy are bunk.

If you don't want the specific debunkings because you're afraid someone might have something negative to say about your particular "alternative health remedy" (which is obviously Not Bunk, because You're No Mere Tool of the Medical Conspiracy, and because You're Obviously Too Smart To Fall For Bunk, and because Science Doesn't Have All The Answers Anyways!), at least read the articles on How Quackery Sells 25 ways to spot it and do your own due diligence.

There are also Quacks who sell Books and Bogus Cures based on Bogus Claims and Bad Science.

Here is a good place to start if you'd like to understand why Chelation Therapy and Homeopathy are bunk.

If you don't want the specific debunkings because you're afraid someone might have something negative to say about your particular "alternative health remedy" (which is obviously Not Bunk, because You're No Mere Tool of the Medical Conspiracy, and because You're Obviously Too Smart To Fall For Bunk, and because Science Doesn't Have All The Answers Anyways!), at least read the articles on How Quackery Sells 25 ways to spot it and do your own due diligence.

There are also Quacks who sell Books and Bogus Cures based on Bogus Claims and Bad Science.

Here is a good place to start if you'd like to understand why Chelation Therapy and Homeopathy are bunk.

If you don't want the specific debunkings because you're afraid someone might have something negative to say about your particular "alternative health remedy" (which is obviously Not Bunk, because You're No Mere Tool of the Medical Conspiracy, and because You're Obviously Too Smart To Fall For Bunk, and because Science Doesn't Have All The Answers Anyways!), at least read the articles on How Quackery Sells 25 ways to spot it and do your own due diligence.

The Mercury Amalgam Scam: How Anti-Amalgamists Swindle People outlines the history of the quacks behind the "amalgam is poison" crowd, who make their living turning scientific illiteracy into unnecessary dental procedures.

Here's an extremely good rebuttal to the 'mercury fillings will kill you!' perspective.

Fundamentally, it boils down to exposure levels (both acute and chronic), and absorption. The exposure to mercury vapour from fillings is measurable, but far below environmental exposure levels. Furthermore, the amount of mercury from fillings that's actually absorbed is equally low. Mostly it's sensationalistic reporting trying to draw a connection where none exists.

I've got bad teeth (mostly hereditary) and a mouth full of metal. As they wear out, they're getting replaced with ceramic because that's the fashion these days, and I like having what looks like healthy teeth. I'm not worried about the evil mercury floating around in my system, though.

Now processing gold panning fines, that's another story altogether...

(What was the topic again? Oh, right - just format it and install Mandrake.)