There’s a helpful website called Quack Watch. It’s run by Stephen Barrett, M.D and its mission among other things is:

Our Casewatch site contains a large library of legal cases, licensing board actions, government sanctions, and regulatory actions against questionable medical products.

So it’s a great place to find out what snake oil salesmen and their worthless (and sometimes dangerous) products are  up to.

Enter in one Doctor’s Data a lab that is beloved by quacks for its willingness to post questionable results and findings that are used to promote all sorts of pseudoscience.

I first saw this pop up on Orac’s blog (and has since spread like wild fire through said blogosphere), Doctor’s Data is suing Quackwatch to shut them up. Yes, they are trying to intimidate Dr. Barrett for calling them out. This time specifically on chelation – a process to remove heavy metals from the body. Chelation gets touted in all kinds of miracles cures. From getting rid of Autism to cancer.

In cases where you have heavy metal poisoning chelation works – otherwise all it removes is money from your wallet.

This is a particularly stupid move on Doctor’s Data part. While this lawsuit will be annoying and a burden for Dr. Barrett, should it actually go to court Doctor’s Data will have to prove the efficacy of their claims. That’s a no-win situation since what Doctor’s Data promotes doesn’t work.

So what’s the end game? To become such a burden on Dr. Barrett and Quackwatch that they’ll be forced to settle out of court. In this manner Doctor’s Data can claim a win.

This same scenario has played out for two years over in the UK with Simon Singh and the British Chiropractic Association who sued Simon for libel after being called out for what they were - pseudo scientific crap. It cost Simon a small fortune, but in the course of it all he waged a massive libel reform campaign that put the BAC under such a spotlight that they dropped the case (since all their methods were being shown as pure bunk!).

So we find ourselves in a similar situation. Dr. Barrett will have to stay the course until Doctor’s Data crumbles… under their own worthless data.

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Update: Liz Ditz of the I Speak Of Dreams blog has a fantastic breakdown of the science and story. Worth reading!

Back in January I posted about Andrew Wakefield and the official ruling that he was a fraud.

He’s since been peddling away in Texas like nothing has happened, like his research hasn’t been debunked, like his papers haven’t been rejected, and like he isn’t the laughing stock of the medical community for his bogus and outrageous claims.

It appears Wakefield is going to appear on CBS with Matt Lauer. Orac has a great break down of it on his blog.

Want to get a better understanding of it all? Check out this awesome graphic novel of the whole story.

Regardless, I’d like to take this moment to thank England for sending its loonies to us. First the Puritans and now this. THANKS A LOT.

Remember those bent pieces of wire that are supposed to pass for bomb sniffers, the ones used ineffectually in Iraq, and then the company’s owner was arrested in England for selling these pieces or junk?

Well, the army chief General Anupong Paojinda of Thailand thinks they are just spiffy and is using them in his country to not catch bombs as well. To understand the depths of this man’s moronic thinking, I give you:

“I respect the scientific tests but at this stage there is no banning order by the government so the army will continue to use it,” he said.

These would be the tests that showed these dowsing rods were what all dowsing rods are - ineffectual pieces of bent metal. The same tests that got the maker of these dowsing rods arrested in England.

So while people continue to die in Thailand due to this ignoramus’ actions, the army will continue to use these devices that don’t work… because.

Yet More Stupidity

As Bad Astronomer dug up on his blog, Iraq is still using these things with abandon. Good job Iraq, way to join the 21st century. Oh wait, you are too busy exploding from bombs walking by your dowsing rods.

Isn’t it awesome when people above you adopt pseudoscientific bullshit that gets you killed. I doubt we’ll see either of these Generals using these rods to detect bombs. In fact, both these guys ARE rods.

What’s the harm? Why so vociferous?

Here’s why from the Washington Post:

An Oregon couple (Jeff and Marci Beagley) was found guilty Tuesday of criminally negligent homicide for praying over their ill son instead of seeking medical help.

As a parent I can’t even begin to imagine how the hell you let this happen.  But, you see, the stupid doesn’t stop there.

The Beagleys are the parents of Raylene Worthington, who along with her husband were acquitted of manslaughter last year in the March 2008 death of their 15-month-old daughter, Ava, from pneumonia and a blood infection. Her husband, Carl Brent Worthington, was convicted of misdemeanor criminal mistreatment.

So wait, we have TWO generations of morons killing their kids with pseudo-scientific bullshit. Their excuse?

both members of the Followers of Christ Church

Oh. But wait!

Church members gasped as Judge Steven Maurer read the verdicts (for the Beagleys).

Yes, we have a whole congregation of loons that are shocked – positively shocked that someone of their ilk is going to jail for willfully murdering their kids.

Right now there could be two healthy, happy kids. Instead, because of a belief that some magic is going to heal these kids that stems from an even larger magical being that lives in a magical realm we have two kids dead, that no doubt suffered a lot of pain and fear while the people they thought loved them clasped hands and gibbered nonsense over them.

And that, folks, is why believing in nonsense kills.

So what is the punishment for this? 16-18 months in jail.

Somehow justice has not been served.

A while back I  ranted about stupidity in my own backyard in regards to antivaxxers. Another local Maryland blogger over at Bastion of Sass turned their sight onto something equally as moronic – classes about utter nonsense at local Community Colleges.

Let’s take a look at a few:

Dowsing for a Healthy Home: Practice the ancient art of dowsing. Used for centuries to find underground water, it is being used now to identify positive and negative earth energies that may affect your home and overall state of health. Discover ways to transform energy drains and enhance beneficial energy throughout your home.

Usui Reiki II: Continue the Reiki experience. Receive a Usui Reiki II attunement and prepare for the Master of Master/Teacher certification….Includes valuable information on how to set up a Usui Reiki healing practice.

Awaken Your Purpose through Numerology: Discover the world of modern numerology, spiritual awareness, and universal and personal life energy patterns. Understand life’s lessons and your inner desires and learn how to fulfill them physically, mentally, emotionally and intuitively.

Really? I mean REALLY? In a time when unemployment is at a staggering all time high we’ve got Community Colleges offering courses on bullshit instead of adding courses on useful things like programming, science, English and any number of other skills that could actually land somebody a job.

Seriously folks, making fun of people that got Liberal Arts degree is one thing, but this goes beyond the pale. Worse, it actually will make somebody without any sort of common sense think this crap can actually do something. Dowsing for a healthy home? Perhaps the Iraqi General who purchased those dowsing rods to detect bombs, that subsequently failed allowing suicide bombers into ‘safe’ areas killing hundreds so far, needs to take a remedial course at CCBC.

It used to be Health 101 and Gym were the running joke but at least you could get some facts and coordination out of those classes. Hell, maybe if you study REAL hard in your Reiki class you can go win the James Randi Foundations $1 Million Dollar challenge.  You want to awaken your purpose? Go volunteer in a soup kitchen because numerology won’t tell you shit.

Really, I expect better, especially when my tax money helps to fund these places.

From the Letters of Note website comes this gem from awesome American author Mark Twain. The set-up

In November of 1905, an enraged Mark Twain sent this superb letter to J. H. Todd, a patent medicine salesman who had just attempted to sell bogus medicine to the author by way of a letter and leaflet delivered to his home. According to the literature Twain received, the ‘medicine’ in question – The Elixir of Life – could cure such ailments as meningitis (which had previously killed Twain’s daughter in 1896) and diphtheria (which had also killed his 19-month-old son). Twain, himself of ill-health at the time and very recently widowed after his wife suffered heart failure, was understandably furious and dictated the following letter to his secretary, which he then signed.

And Twain’s response:

Nov. 20. 1905

J. H. Todd
1212 Webster St.
San Francisco, Cal.

Dear Sir,

Your letter is an insoluble puzzle to me. The handwriting is good and exhibits considerable character, and there are even traces of intelligence in what you say, yet the letter and the accompanying advertisements profess to be the work of the same hand. The person who wrote the advertisements is without doubt the most ignorant person now alive on the planet; also without doubt he is an idiot, an idiot of the 33rd degree, and scion of an ancestral procession of idiots stretching back to the Missing Link. It puzzles me to make out how the same hand could have constructed your letter and your advertisements. Puzzles fret me, puzzles annoy me, puzzles exasperate me; and always, for a moment, they arouse in me an unkind state of mind toward the person who has puzzled me. A few moments from now my resentment will have faded and passed and I shall probably even be praying for you; but while there is yet time I hasten to wish that you may take a dose of your own poison by mistake, and enter swiftly into the damnation which you and all other patent medicine assassins have so remorselessly earned and do so richly deserve.

Adieu, adieu, adieu!

Mark Twain

This letter should be copied and sent to Boots and other companies selling and promoting Homeopathy – same shit, different century.

A while back I wrote about the pure insanity of the Iraqi military using dowsing rods to find explosives and firearms. Today there was an update that the creep selling these items has been arrested in the UK.

The Register has the full, unbelievable  scoop on it.

My favorite quote from the article:

McCormick hit back, however, telling the paper that “we have been dealing with doubters for ten years. One of the problems we have is that the machine does look a little primitive. We are working on a new model that has flashing lights.”

I’m not sure who’s more of a nut job, the guy making and selling these things are the idiot General in Iraq that believes they work. Perhaps they’re tied in their gullibility?

Another win from Big Fat Whale

Here’s a great site (and pretty too) that breaks down just how insanely stupid homeopathy is. The name of the site is a play on words (I’ll leave it up to you to figure it out).

My favorite section out of the site that sums it up nicely for me:

9. It detracts from real medicine

Giving legitimacy to unproven – or rather, proven to be ineffective – treatments does not come without a cost. The cost of allowing the promotion of homeopathy as an ‘alternative’ to real medicine comes where patients are unable to distinguish between a harmless which will cure itself given time, and a more serious illness which will become life-threatening if incorrectly untreated. Stories of people abandoning real medicine in favour of quack cures, with disastrous results, are not hard to find . By allowing the promotion of a therapy proven to be both ineffective and entirely implausible, we encourage people to turn their back on the treatments that can help them, in favour of quackery.

And that’s the real cost right there. Distracting people from real medicine with promises of fairy dust and magic. Meh.

There’s been a long war of words between CAM (complimentary and alternative medicine) and the science and evidence based medicine camps that Chiropractic is nonsense.

On the CAM side are practitioners of Chiropractics that claim subluxations (the adjust of your bones) cures everything from infertility, diseases, and muscle pain. Their claims are backed up by… well, a lot of words, anecdotes, and personal stories.

On the science and evidence based medicine side are studies and papers saying that when put under examination Chiropractics at best does nothing, and at worst causes lots of damage.

A recent post over on the Science-Based Medicine blog goes into detail about the latest published study by four Chiropractors that the pillar of their practice, subluxations, really does nothing.

So why is this important? Two things, first massive amounts of insurance money gets paid out to CAM and Chiropractors for something that doesn’t work. Second, people who have conditions that could be fixed by real doctors are going untreated.

“But wait, ” you say, “what about people I know that go to the Chiropractor and feel better?” Indeed, some people do feel better. This may come from the placebo effect of somebody giving what is essentially a massage. Chiropractics does employ similar methods that physical therapists do. While it’s great they feel better, they could be getting better quicker with the right recovery program under a licensed physical therapist or sports medicine doctor. Moreover, though, they are being lied and scammed. Snake oil is snake oil, even if it sometimes it makes you feel better.

Worse, the paradigm behind CAM is to push their ideology against all evidence – and this is dangerous ground to tread. Right now, a massive political battle is being fought in England spear-headed by Simon Singh over their libel laws, where he is being sued for exposing alternative medicine like Chiropractic for what it is – quackery. For those efforts he got slapped with a lawsuit that forces him to prove unequivocally that it is indeed quackery. The UK Chiropractic association probably thought they had a slam dunk win. However, as more studies turn up, and as their claims are put to the light, they’ve been on a massive backpedal, issuing proclamations to their members to take down websites that extol the virtues of Chiropractics. Why? Because their claims are ludicrous and their whole industry is about to be ripped wide open in court. The exact opposite of what they though would happen (actually they thought Simon Singh would curl up in a ball, apologize and never speak ill of them again. Fat chance!)

At the end of the day, what does this have to do with… well… anything?

When going about your day, one might never suspect those fancy looking offices with guys in white lab coats that call themselves doctors and practice Chiropractics are anything but nice, helpful, and a way to fix your aches and pains. It all looks on the up-and-up, prim, proper and official. Without that close examination and inquiry you’d never know it was a bunch of crap.

If that load of unsuspecting crap one day comes in between you and your health – well who is fucked?

You.

And what made Chiropractics look and feel official? Your tax dollars, your congressmen and senators who forced CAM, by support of CAM lobbyists, into the National Institute of Health, which is part of the US Department of Health and Human Services. They gave it legitimacy, funding, and self-regulation. Without being any wiser, you’d think CAM was on the same pedestal as AIDS research, cancer research, and all the clinical trials that go on to find better medicines and medical practices.

There’s been a loose collection of doctors and scientists standing up to the quackery. They’ recently formed a body to spread the knowledge of what goes on behind the scenes. To keep yourself informed I encourage you to check their new digs, The Institute for Science in Medicine.

In a perfect world you wouldn’t have to keep up with all this bullshit. But alas…