I was all kinds of excited when I was browsing Netgalley and came across Quack Quack: The Threat of Pseudoscience by Dr. Joe Schwarcz, the director at McGill University’s Office for Science and Society. The book aims to convince people of the importance of separating sense from nonsense, and it’s packed with plenty of examples …
Book Review: Quack Quack: The Threat of Pseudoscience Read More »
Manifestation is all over the internet, part of the whole law of attraction vibrational package. Because I have a bit (or a lot) of a fixation on purple people eaters, they’ll help us see what we might or might not be able to manifest. The purple monster critter in the image above is someone I’ve …
Many fields have their own jargon, which Wikipedia describes as “specialized terminology associated with a particular field or area of activity” that often isn’t well understood by people outside of that particular field. While jargon can help people within a field communicate precisely, that doesn’t necessarily translate well outside of the field. It can be …
I’m a very science-minded person, and one of the things that really grates my rutabagas is when people make things up and call it science. In particular, I’m not impressed with pseudoscientific made-up vibrations, and especially the made-up idea of vibrating thoughts, law of attraction style. Somehow, the notion of essential oil frequencies and “high …
“High Vibration”? Essential Oil Frequency Debunked Read More »
There are plenty of odd pseudoscientific health practices out there, but psychic surgery kicks it up to a whole new level of weird. Psychic surgery isn’t like what happens in an operating room; it’s more like what happens on a magician’s stage. Sleight of hand, fake blood, and animal parts are used to make the …
Detox diets and cleanses are quite popular these days, especially if you’re of the Goop-y persuasion. And while they might seem to make sense on an intuitive level, from a scientific perspective, is there anything to actually back that up? Or is it just pseudoscientific nonsense? “Toxins” Commercial detox products tend to refer vaguely to …
The term adrenal fatigue was first used by chiropractor James Wilson in 1998, and it became popular with a book he published in 2001. I’ve written before about some of the quacky dabbling of chiropractors outside the neck and back pain issues we commonly associate them with. You can probably guess from that alone where …
Have you aligned your chakras today? Or perhaps you’ve wondered if the whole chakra craze is a bit over the top, or whether chakras or real or just conceptual. If you’ve read any of my other articles on pseudoscience, maybe you can guess what my take on the matter is. Traditional concept of chakras The …
Let’s say your back hurts. You go to a chiropractor, over a few visits they crack a few joints, and that’s all she wrote, right? That’s certainly what I used to think about chiropractic. It turns out, though, that quackery has been around from the very beginning of chiropractic. The modern back-cracking that most of …
Crystals are pretty, there’s no doubt about that. But do they actually have healing powers as some claim, and can they do anything for your health and wellbeing? The belief that precious stones have healing powers has been around for centuries. In current practice, it’s most often associated with the New Age movement. It draws …
