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Here is a recap of the stories that appeared last week at Science-Based Medicine, a multi-author skeptical blog that separates the science from the woo in medicine.

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I am happy to announce that after an extensive months-long search in the nonprofit world, we have recently appointed Sadie Crabtree as the James Randi Educational Foundation's new director of communications. She has about a decade of experience in communications strategy with various nonprofits, and is passionate about the mission of the JREF. To introduce her to the skeptics community, I asked her to answer a couple questions for this post.

Tell us about your experience with communications for other non-profits, and what it means for the JREF.

Sadie Crabtree: For the last nine years I’ve worked with a variety of organizations, including labor unions, community organizations, and feminist and LGBT nonprofits, to help them plan and win campaigns that change laws, change minds, and improve people’s lives. Strategic communications is more than getting publicity—it’s getting the right message to the right people in the right way to accomplish what an organization sets out to do. The aims of skepticism are ambitious. Our ultimate goal at the JREF is not simply to investigate claims ourselves and to change what people think. We want to change how people think. That’s a huge challenge, and I want to help skeptics do it better.

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I live in Canada, in a province called Alberta. Anyone who looks at a map knows that Canada is a rather large country and in fact Alberta is only a little smaller than Texas, but instead of the thirty-something million inhabitants that are in Texas, Alberta contains just over three million souls. In other words, we have lots and lots of space here, and in that space there is a lot of farming and a great deal of livestock. In fact, there are nearly 5.5 million cattle in Alberta, outnumbering humans by a significant margin, but cattle are certainly not the only livestock raised in Alberta.

Elk
Elk Antler Velvet:  Another alt med fad.

In recent years there are an increasing number of farmers in Alberta that are breeding and raising Elk, and for something I never would have guessed – the antler velvet that male Elk produce each year when their antlers grow. The desire to harvest and use Elk antler velvet stems from; you guessed it, Chinese medicine. According to Wikipedia, Elk antler velvet is second only to ginseng in importance to Chinese medicine practitioners.  An acquaintance of mine who raises elk recently told me that almost all of his elk antler velvet goes to the Korean alternative medicine market.

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Sanjay Gupta, the medical guru-on-staff at CNN, should really stay with subjects he understands. He just had Susan Casey, editor-in-chief of “O” magazine, and Dr. Jeff Rediger, M.D., Harvard Department of Psychiatry, on his program discussing a visit they had made to Brazil, where they met “John of God” – João Teixeira – who I handled in detail back on February 18th, 2005, to be found here. These two “experts” arrived there well prepared to prove that they, too, were well out of their respective depths. Casey set the tone when she began with:

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There’s interesting news about something that just happened in Australia, and needs to happen all over the globe...  The makers of the ridiculous plastic "Power Balance" bracelet, which is selling by the millions everywhere, have been forced to publish a comprehensive statement from which we extract:

In our advertising we stated that Power Balance wristbands improved your strength, balance and flexibility. We admit that there is no credible scientific evidence that supports our claims and therefore we engaged in misleading conduct in breach of s52 of the Trade Practices Act 1974.

  1. Last Week at Science-Based Medicine
  2. Jamy Ian Swiss Amazes on Craig Ferguson
  3. Swamp Monster, Movie Marketing, or Hunter's Prank.
  4. Mythbuster Adam Savage on "The Importance of Failure" from The Amaz!ng Meeting 7