This image popped up again on FB the other day. It was originally posted, with the comments I've pasted below, on a page run by/for someone called 'Dr Sebi'. I do not recommend asking his advice. After all, I'm doubtful that someone who could say something like this, in advising people what not to eat […]
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the dangerous delusions around use of ‘black salve’
Black salve. A slightly ominous name, but to some people it seems to be the best thing since sliced bread. A colleague has just pointed me at a discussion (on FB, where else?) around the use of 'black salve' to heal a self-diagnosed melanoma. (That bit's important – the person concerned never saw a doctor […]
Continue readingcritiquing another thesis on vaccination
Given the fuss occasioned by her PhD thesis, I was interested to look at the document produced for Judy Wilyman's MSc (available here on-line), largely to see what attention had been given to the science content and perspectives. Having examined or adjudicated a number of Masters theses in the sciences, I've a reasonably good idea […]
Continue readingthe wilyman thesis on how smallpox is transmitted
I had another head-desk moment today, on reading a bit more of Judy Wilyman's PhD thesis (a bit at a time is quite enough). The document has quite a bit to say about smallpox. I've already noted the ill-considered statement that the vaccine has never been subject to clinical trials – a statement unaccompanied by […]
Continue readingwollongong thesis has this to say on smallpox
This is the human face of smallpox: Photo Credit: Content Providers(s): CDC/James Hicks This media comes from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Public Health Image Library (PHIL), with identification number #3265. Smallpox is now extinct in the wild: the last known case was in 1977. And this is what Judy Wilyman has to say about the vaccine that […]
Continue readingfreedom of opinion has its place, but this phd thesis goes too far
One of today's big stories, in the blogosphere and elsewhere, is of the University of Wollongong's decision to award a PhD to a thesis that promotes a strongly anti-vaccination take on the policies and science relating to immunisation. Fellow NZ scibloggers Helen Petousis Harris and Grant Jacobs have already commented on it, and over on Respectful Insolence […]
Continue readinga science communicator silenced by the mob
Well, this sucks, & that’s putting it mildly. From Kevin Folta’s blog, Illumination: Dr Folta has been under constant attack in recent months since it emerged that Monsanto had donated $US25,000 to fund a science outreach program he was running. Not his research, but an outreach program. He was accused of a conflict of interest […]
Continue readingoh sad new world, that has such foolishness in it!
The internet is a seething pool of ‘stuff’, and one of the challenges faced by those using it is to distinguish useful information from foolish fantasy. And there surely is a lot of the latter! Thus we find that According to a BBC news story, the Indian government’s Agriculture Minister has said that yogic farming would […]
Continue reading‘slapping therapy’ for diabetes, and a child dies
I've heard it said more than once that complementary & alternative medicine (CAM) 'does no harm' – here's just one example. I suppose that could be true of a healthy person using something like homeopathy, where the only harm is likely to be to their wallet. But time and again, forms of CAM have been shown to do harm, […]
Continue readingslugs, and snails, and … facials?
Today's Life/Style section in the Herald on Sunday brings us the latest 'beauty trend' to hit our shores: the snail facial. Yes, you read that correctly. Apparently one can (if one has a sufficiency of funds) already purchase Snail Soap, which contains "snail slime, virgin olive oil, honey and extracts from medicinal plants". The slime […]
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