New York Times pushes pseudoscience: detoxing!

Most of you probably know that the concept of “detoxing”—taking various nostrums to purge your body of supposedly retained “toxins”—is a scam. Our body doesn’t retain toxins (except for things like ingested polonium fed you by Russian operatives); and the “purges,” ranging from drinking lemon juice to taking coffee enemas—do nothing. (Thanks, Gwyneth!) Despite that, […]

Diseases are correlated with birth months

Five days ago I reported on the unctuous Dr. Mehmet Oz and his new claim that various medical conditions and ailments were correlated with your astrological sign. I poo-pooed this since I couldn’t see any obvious connection between birth date and medical conditions. Well, I may have spoken a bit too fast, though, as I […]

Woo from Dr. Oz and Everyday Feminism

Dr. Mehmet Oz was launched into public celebrity via promotions by Oprah Winfrey and Larry King. He still has a daily television show on Fox, “The Dr. Oz Show,” which I blessedly haven’t seen. But I have read about his various promotions of pseudoscience, including weight loss nostrums, alternative medicine, and even “reparative therapy” designed to […]

Jesus ‘n’ Mo ‘n’ Reiki

The new Jesus and Mo strip, called “trade”, came with a message from the pair: We’ve done Reiki before, but exorcism is in the news again [JAC: see here], and the irony of exorcists being sceptical about reiki is just too tasty to resist. If you don’t know what Reiki is, it’s a form of […]

Octopuses as aliens from another planet?

Reader Tim sent me a link to this article from the Daily Express, which I don’t read but suppose, from this one article, is about as credible as The Sun or other British tabloids purveying fake stories. Click on screenshot to see the article.  I’ll make this into an exercise in which readers can tell […]

Jeremy Sherman still doesn’t understand evolution

On March 19 I wrote a critique of decision theorist Jeremy Sherman’s view that evolution is powerless to explain why organisms “try” to do things and appear to “value” some behaviors more than others.  Well, of course, he’s wrong because, although he’s not dumb, he apparently doesn’t understand how natural selection could lead to “purposeful” […]

Only 2/3 of American Millennials believe that the Earth is round

UPDATE: Reader Brian called my attention to an NPR article reporting that young people are much more likely to lie on polls than are their elders; perhaps that explains the result below. As he noted, “This does not explain the link between religion and flat earth that you observed, which is definitely interesting, but this […]

Tonight!: Livestreamed Intelligence-Squared Debate on God and Woo with Deepakity Chopra, Michael Shermer, Heather Berlin, and Anook Kumar

Lucky you! Tonight you get to watch, for free—and it costs $40 to attend live—a debate at this website, which runs from 7:00 to 8:45 pm this evening, Eastern US time. Just click here or on the screenshot below to see the livestreamed fun. Here’s the topic, which is just plain weird: Does God have […]

A muddled thinker claims that evolution can’t explain organisms or their “strivings”

Alternet notes that Jeremy Sherman “is a decision theorist studying how life deals with dilemmas from the origins of life to everyday and political life.” In the article below (click on the screenshot), he also shows himself to be deeply muddled about evolution. The headline is tantalizing, but the “biological mystery” that science can’t explain […]

Chopra and Tanzi: Exercise will reprogram your genes in 60 days

While eating my ribtips (I see the termites have already descended on that post), I turned on the PBS channel on t.v. (WTTW in Chicago, if anybody there is listening.) On the show, to my chagrin, appeared Deepak Chopra and Rudy Tanzi, On a show called “Brain, Body, Mind”, they were dispensing health advice to […]