Sysiphus Speaks

Today the Hammacher Schlemmer (sounds like a bad response to treating syphilis) catalog came. That is worth a scan since its target audience is not me. $31,500 for aquatic thusters. $25,000 for a robotic bartender. $54,000 for a self contained hootenanny, although the description refers to it a veritable shin-dig. Which is it? I refer to the only Oz who you can trust:

Well, a gathering is brie, mellow song stylings; shindig, dip, less mellow song stylings, perhaps a large amount of malt beverage; and hootenanny, well, it's chock full of hoot, just a little bit of nanny.

Testimonials are powerful affirmations even with the topic is fantasy. These positive stories serve to perpetuate the nonsense of pseudo-medicines and the effect is perhaps magnified by the internet, as demonstrated in How Feedback Biases Give Ineffective Medical Treatments a Good Reputation

As a rule I do not think that those involved in the anti-vaccine world or alternative medicine are stupid. They are wrong, but not stupid. Nor do I think they have nefarious motives or agendas. Most people are doing the best they can.

Except in Ohio, where there is a bill to limit the teaching of the scientific process.

The standards in science shall be based in core existing disciplines of biology, chemistry, and physics; incorporate grade-level mathematics and be referenced to the mathematics standards; focus on academic and scientific knowledge rather than scientific processes; and prohibit political or religious interpretation of scientific facts in favor of another.

The jist of the article is he wants to dump all his difficult to treat patients on to the naturopaths.

With so many of our patients presenting with chronic pain, functional disorders, and other difficult-to-manage chronic conditions, allopathic primary care physicians clearly need more compelling options for managing chronic disease...Naturopaths would seem ideally positioned to fill this partnership role.

nosodes, the homeopathy answer to vaccines, recently suggested for the prevention and treatment of Ebola.

n a just-issued press release, the CRN announced an on-line tool (for members only) that would track Federal Trade Commission enforcement actions against dietary supplement companies.

“Unfortunately, this abandonment never seems to occur,” they wrote in their paper. “Acupuncture and reiki remain widely practised and even embraced at academic institutions, and even homeopathy continued to be practised despite clinical trials that demonstrate effects indistinguishable from placebo effects.”

As I have mentioned before, there appear to be as many styles of acupuncture coming out of China as there are practitioners. Each has a signature move. For example, there is Wrist-Ankle Acupuncture (WAA). Does this style reign supreme?

A while back I mentioned a study that wasn't a study by the British Chiropractor Association that suggested that texting could kill you.