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A January 1996 magazine article opened with the story of a Brooklyn attorney in a video store trying to decide whether she should rent the videotape Barney's Imagination Island for her daughter. The learned counselor, it said, took a small pendulum from her purse, suspended it over the tape, and said,

All right, now please tell me how much little Aliza would benefit from watching this tape, how much it would raise her social awareness, brighten her chakras, elevate her chi energy, and like that. And please let's try to be a little quicker about it.

Does that sound like an educated person having a conversation with a smple object? Well, that’s just what it is. No conversation with a pendulum has ever been known to result in an exchange, let alone an answer… The description continued:

The pendulum begins to swing, indicating a rating scale of 1-100. Sadly for Barney, the pendulum only gives the tape a 12.

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Editing the text for A Magician in the Laboratory, my next book, I came upon an item that may interest SWIFT readers as a bit of ancient flummery.  

The Chronicle of Higher Education – based in Washington, D.C. – proudly states that it is the major news service serving the United States academic world. That may well be, but early last year, an article written by Dr. Mikita Brottman, 45, a professor of humanities at the Maryland Institute College of Art, appeared in the Chronicle extolling a show at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County. It was titled, Psychic Projections/Photographic Impressions: Paranormal Photographs from the Jule Eisenbud Collection on Ted Serios. This was a display of some 60 examples of how rationality can be easily abandoned when a sufficiently attractive woo-woo subject is brought up and dignified by such individuals, colleges, and media outlets.  

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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.  

A surprising article about “integrative” medicine in The New England Journal of Medicine vs. “patient-centered” care (David Gorski) http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/a-surprising-article-about-integrative-medicine-in-the-new-england-journal-of-medicine-vs-patient-centered-care/ At an integrative health fair a blood test supposedly diagnosed a woman with cancer and she was offered a $6000 course of treatment with intravenous vitamin C. Her MD had great difficulty convincing her that she didn’t actually have cancer. Patient-centered care requires real informed consent, and “integrative medicine” relies on misinformed consent.  

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Water has a certain psychological appeal - it represents purity, wholesomeness, and life. It is no surprise, therefore, that water is the focus of many snake oil scams, variations on the basic theme of "magic" or special water that has healthful or even healing properties.  

Of course, water is just water. H2O. It is vital to life, and access to adequate supplies of clean water is important to health. The body has many mechanisms for regulating the amount and location of water inside the body, as well as the concentration of many things that are present in the body's water.  

But despite the delusions of homeopaths, water itself cannot have magical healing properties. Yet water remains the snake oil salesman's favorite product, both for its psychological appeal and the massive markup. What's better than selling plain old water at ridiculous prices?  

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When the planet Uranus was discovered on March 13, 1781, it caused a conundrum for classical astrologers. Their rules revolved around a system of exactly seven heavenly bodies (5 planets, the moon and the sun). Seven is a magical number, of course. Adding an eighth body ruined the magic.

But Uranus also posed a problem for real scientists too, who noticed anomalies in its orbit. French astronomer Urbain Le Verrier, who was born March 11, 1811, calculated that they could be explained by motion of an unseen planet beyond Uranus. Based on his calculations, Neptune was in located via observations in 1846.

  1. Understanding Coincidence
  2. Grassroots Spotlight: CNY Skeptics
  3. Last Week At Science-Based Medicine
  4. CCSVI and the Politics of Medicine