Today, we move on to just plain, flaming, weapons-grade foolishness. Foolishness that is, unfortunately, spread to a rather wide audience. Vani Hari is the self-described 'Food Babe', on a mission to 'make America's food safer'. According to Ms Hari, if you can't pronounce a food item's ingredients, you shouldn't be eating it1. I guess she's […]
Continue readingTag: pseudoscience
but surely if it does no harm…
With Acupuncture Week coming up, I thought it might be timely to revisit one of my earlier posts on the subject. Since I originally wrote this piece, there's been at least one high-profile example of needles being found where they definitely shouldn't have been: a 7cm needle found in the lung of a former president […]
Continue readingcsiro should fund dowsing? are you serious???
I came across this story on Science's 'science sifter' page: The next CEO of Australia’s leading research agency, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), is in hot water after suggesting the cash-strapped organization spend scarce research dollars investigating water divining, or dowsing. The editors at Science do have a sense of humour & […]
Continue reading‘alternative’ medicine – numbers using it =/= evidence it works
Recently some friends & I were discussing the use of what might be called 'Supplementary, Complementary, & Alternative Medicine' – a group of 'therapies' that includes (but is not limited to) things like homeopathy, reiki, acupuncture, ear candling, and cranio-sacral therapy, and for which there is little or no evidence of efficacy. One of the […]
Continue reading‘paleo’ diet? or paleofantasy?
The 'paleo' diet story on Campbell Live tonight spurred me to finish my review of one of the most entertaining popular books on genetics that I have read for some time. Entertaining, and informative, in equal measure. I wonder what author Marlene Zuk would have made of the TV story. Marlene Zuk (2013) Paleofantasy: what […]
Continue readingthere’s the alarming news about ebola, & then there’s this
Over on Sciblogs, Siouxsie Wiles has been writing about the spread of an Ebola virus outbreak in west Africa (here & here, for example). It's alarming stuff: a virus with a high mortality rate, in combination with the potential for infected people to travel more widely than in the past before succumbing. Sadly, it didn't take long […]
Continue readinggmo myths & mythinformation
The GMOLOL group on Facebook regularly posts on the subject of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) and more recently – like many other pages – about the outrageous claims by the self-styled "Health Ranger" about Monsanto, likening the company & pretty much anyone with anything positive to say about GMOs to the Nazi regime of WWII. […]
Continue readingdissecting the predictable (in this case, ffnz on broadbent et al)
A paper just out by Broadbent et al (2014) describes research which used data from a 38-year-long longitudinal study of Dunedin children to examine claims that exposure to fluoride in childhood has a negative effect on children's IQ. The paper found these claims wanting, and thus – quite predictably – it's now subject to attack […]
Continue readingignorance wins over science? let’s try that another way
On Thursday last week, Hamilton’s city councillors voted 9-1 to return fluoride to the city’s water supply. There was a fair bit of misrepresentation going on ahead of the decision – including the claims that it would cost at least $100,000 and this was unbudgeted (both untrue). And there was the predictable outrage after the […]
Continue readingfluoridation – if you fail in the courts, try fear (& more misinformation)
Since the High Court judgement came out there's been a lot of news coverage on this issue – and an awful lot of misinformation & just plain fear tactics (particularly in social media) from those opposed to community water fluoridation (CWF). Last night's news coverage had this from TV One News (skip to 5:43) and […]
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