This Week In Doubtful News
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- Written by Sharon Hill
- Category: Latest JREF News
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Here is a rundown of the top stories in pseudoscience, paranormal and anomaly news from the past week courtesy of Doubtful News.
The big news this week was an outbreak of whooping cough, or pertussis. Cases have exploded in Washington state. Tragically, a baby dies in Idaho. In Australia,the ad commission required removal of homeopathic claims for pertussis. Meanwhile, anti-vaxxers are injecting misinformation into warnings about a real threat of disease spread with the upcoming Summer Olympics. For more anti-vax news, click this category link.
Good news regarding the forthcoming Mayan apocalypse: a newly discovered calendar does not show the world ending this December. And, just to be safe, even though you drop the lucky skull that will save us all, it should still work.
This week’s monster was a strange creature captured on a remote controlled underwater video camera surveying an oil rig.
Last Week At Science-Based Medicine
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- Written by Dr. Harriet Hall
- Category: Latest JREF News
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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.
Plausibility bias? You say that as though that were a bad thing! (David Gorski) http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/plausibility_bias/ Homeopaths criticize scientists for rejecting homeopathy because of bias against its implausibility. Good science requires considering plausibility and not wasting time and money on every crazy idea. Plausibility bias is reality bias: it’s a good thing.
Homeopathy and Nanoparticles (Harriet Hall) http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/homeopathy-and-nanoparticles/ An uncontrolled experiment in India allegedly demonstrated nanoparticles of the original substance in highly dilute homeopathic remedies that shouldn’t contain a single molecule. Their findings were likely due to contamination or experimental artifact; and even if nanoparticles could be convincingly demonstrated, that wouldn’t mean homeopathic remedies had therapeutic effects.
The Quack Clinic Checklist
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- Written by Dr. Steven Novella
- Category: Swift
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I am asked almost daily about one kind of medical pseudoscience or another. The free market has produced a seemingly endless variation of medical quackery and nonsense for sale. I could never address all of them, because by the time I worked by way through the catalogue of chicanery there would be a fresh crop waiting for me.
There are, however, a couple of strategies for dealing with the thousands of claims and products. The first is to lump them into categories - many dubious claims are just variations on a pseudoscientific theme, and if you understand the themes you can quickly size up a particular manifestation of the theme. For this reason defenders of science-based medicine will often deconstruct these pseudoscientific themes, such as energy medicine, detox treatments, homonculus-based diagnostic schemes, and nutritional fallacies.
Another strategy is to build a list of features or red flags that should alert a savvy health consumer to the questionable nature of a practitioner, claim, or product. That is what I am going to cover in this article, exploring some of the most common features of medical quackery.
Skeptic History: Spam, Spam, Spam
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- Written by Tim Farley
- Category: Swift
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Skeptics often fill a vital role in consumer protection. This is particularly true when pseudoscience and quackery are 
advertised directly to unsuspecting members of the general public.
Today this can occur via unsolicited commercial email, or “spam”. Anything from so-called herbal viagra to astrology readings to worthless diploma-mill degrees are commonly marketed this way.
Of course, “spam” messages are well known to anyone with an email address now, but when did they start? Online histories often mark the beginning of spam as May 3, 1978, when an ad for a new model of computer was sent to 393 people via ARPAnet, a precursor to the internet.
Nothing Beats A Good Detective Story
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- Written by Michael Blanford
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I recently had the pleasure of watching the fine documentary film Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles. I highly recommend the film to those who haven’t seen it and consider it among the best documentaries I’ve seen this year. While I won’t give it a comprehensive review (that’s been done here), I do want to applaud the filmmakers for reminding us that mysteries are even more fun when they don’t pander to the paranormal.
Toynbee Tiles are colorful hand-cut tiles found sunken into the asphalt streets of major cities. They were first noticed in Philadelphia, where they are most abundant, in the 1980's. They have since been found in numerous other US cities including Washington DC, Pittsburgh, New York City, Baltimore, Boston, and St. Louis. There are also examples in South America; in Brazil, Argentina, and Chile. To date, about 130 are known. The tiles all display variations of the same message:
TOYNBEE IDEA
IN KUBRICK'S 2001
RESSURECT DEAD
ON PLANET JUPITER
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