Quackery, pseudoscience, and just generally bad information.

SideSteel

I'm not sure who the originator of this blog is, but I find this to be a good read covering the 4 current biggest quacks in the business:




http://www.alternet.org/print/personal-health/four-biggest-quacks-plaguing-america-their-bad-claims-about-science


A few of the brilliant people at sciencebasedmedicine are quoted in the artice. You can find their site here:

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/ (<--- actual science)

^ And I recommend it.

SunofaBeach14

Another vote for sciencebasedmedicine.org. It's a great resource for fact checking sensationalist FB posts and news articles.

ihad

Good reading.

Ludka13

An osteopath is a real doctor. This is from Wikipedia. However I will agree that Mercola is a quack.

Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine (D.O. or DO) is a professional doctoral degree for physicians and surgeons offered by medical schools in the United States. Holders of the D.O. degree have attained the ability to become licensed as osteopathic physicians who have equivalent rights, privileges, and responsibilities as physicians with a Doctor of Medicine degree (M.D.).[1] D.O. physicians are licensed to practice the full scope of medicine and surgery in 65 countries,[2] including all 50 states in the US, and make up 7 percent of the total U.S. physician population. In 2013, there were 87,300 osteopathic physicians in the United States.[3]

Currently, there are 30 medical schools with 42 locations throughout the United States that offer the D.O. degree,[4] and 141 medical schools that offer the M.D. degree.[5][6] As of 2011, 1 in 5 medical students in the United States were D.O. students.[7][8] The curricula at osteopathic medical schools are very similar to those at M.D.-granting medical schools.[9] Four years in total length,[9] the first two years of medical school focus on the biomedical and clinical sciences, followed by two years of core clinical training in the clinical specialties.

Upon leaving medical school, D.O. graduates may enter internship or residency training programs, which may be followed by fellowship training.[9] Many D.O. graduates attend the same graduate medical education programs as their M.D. counterparts,[10] and then take M.D. specialty board exams,[11] while other D.O. graduates enter osteopathic programs[12][13] and take D.O. specialty board examinations.[14]

One notable difference between D.O. and M.D. training is that D.O. training adds 300–500 hours studying philosophically-based techniques for hands-on manipulation of the human musculoskeletal system. These techniques, known as osteopathic manipulative medicine (OMM),[1] have been criticized as "pseudoscientific".[15][16]

michellemybelll

that's a great piece. i know several people i'd love to make sit down and read that.

QuietBloom

Bookmarked!

GiveMeCoffee

Great reading! Thanks

Alluminati

+1 for this thread

shadow2soul

I must be living under a rock. I wasn't aware that Dr. Oz got lectured by the senate. I find that pretty freaking hilarious.

BigGuy47

I bookmarked the Science Based medicine link.

I'll add Examine to the list of balanced sites.

http://examine.com/

Examine seems to offer an unbiased approach to providing information. Not having a scientific background, I'm not the best judge of such things.

SideSteel

I bookmarked the Science Based medicine link.

I'll add Examine to the list of balanced sites.

http://examine.com/

Examine seems to offer an unbiased approach to providing information. Not having a scientific background, I'm not the best judge of such things.

^ Yep, Examine.com is great.

HappyTrails7

Thanks for the links. Bookmarked for future reference.

Serah87

Bump. Good read. Thank you. :flowerforyou:

QuietBloom

I must be living under a rock. I wasn't aware that Dr. Oz got lectured by the senate. I find that pretty freaking hilarious.

Yep, he pretty much got his quacky little a** handed to him.

CallMeCupcakeDammit

In! Tagging for tomorrow when I'm on a computer. Thanks, SS!

Nachise

Don't be so quick to dismiss DOs. My previous primary care physician was a DO who was masterfully well informed. She was the first to diagnose a chronic medical condition that was finally corrected by surgery last year. I probably would have had the surgery years earlier had she not retired. I also saw a DO for treatment of a back injury due to an automobile accident, and I was free of pain in no time.

There are quite a number of frauds out there. I tend to raise my eyebrows at the "cures-all" pitch, or the ones that claim that the government jailed the inventor because of their claims. The inventor was most likely jailed for practicing medicine without a license.

gypsy_spirit

Bookmarked in the names of science and sanity. :drinker:

PennyVonDread

I'm very glad Dr. Oz made the list. He uses scare-tactic, panic propaganda to sell gimmicky products. I hate people who sell by fear or panic over sensibility. His hype is almost always exclusively negative, and he is wonderful at using abstracts from recent studies and completely taking them out of context.

weightliftingdiva

The extent to which modern Americans have fallen prey to scare tactics and health myths is frightening. My friends on my summer program routinely refer to some foods as "healthy" and "unhealthy" and still think saturated fat is the end-all evil. Some of them also believe protein is a "marketing scam " (:noway:). Recently we are looking at the frozen foods and Amy's got deemed to be the "healthiest" compared to the other comparable things that were there - with no one even looking at the nutrition on the boxes. :laugh:

Healthy is relative. And science is science. We are all so easily swayed by people on TV and in big white coats.

BigGuy47

I must be living under a rock. I wasn't aware that Dr. Oz got lectured by the senate. I find that pretty freaking hilarious.

Yep, he pretty much got his quacky little a** handed to him.

He looked shell shocked coming out of the hearings. I checked his show a couple times in the past few weeks. I was surprised to hear him giving sound advice (diet and exercise) rather than pimping the latest miracle fix. Maybe after getting beat up he's changing his tune ? Or is it only a matter of time until he falls back into the marketing the magical elixirs?

PennyVonDread

On #2 Mike Adams... You also need to be careful about the fluoridated water opposition argument. The national media made Portland, OR look stupid by saying we oppose fluoride being added to our water but we buy just as many toothpaste products containing fluoride as other parts of the country.

Our first protest was based on the ethics of it all, how Mayor Sam Adams tried to rush a 4-year project into an extremely accelerated project that he just sprung on us without warning. How he barely gave anyone time to react or oppose or vote, and that he made the decision "for our own good." However, what they don't tell you is that the "fluoride" they wanted to add to our water supply wasn't FDA-approved, food-grade calcium fluoride like they use in toothpaste; it was fluorisilicic acid, a corrosive chemical by-product of fertilizer production that they wanted to dilute into our clean water supply because it's "safe" in parts per million. These kinds of bad politics happen, and a lot of areas in opposition to fluoride, like Portland was, are not against "calcium fluoride" so it's unfair to highlight that point in the article without understanding the politics behind it's opposition.

Unknown

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trinatrina1984

In to read later and also say this guy writes a lot of interesting stuff

http://www.badscience.net/category/weight-loss/

leggup

Yes, yes, and more yes.

Jess__I__Can

+1

_HeartsOnFire_

Awesome!

arussell134

THANK YOU for sharing this! I have a number of friends who like to share Food Babe's posts (and other sensationalists like her) and it drives me batty. While I do believe in eating better and educating yourself about food, her approach has always rubbed me the wrong way.

The other day, she even shared a post she'd written TWO YEARS ago about how Starbucks' food is bad for you. Newflash = they've changed their menu and even bigger newsflash = they've NEVER positioned themselves to be healthy! Here's an idea - instead of trying to expose and bring down every single company that doesn't make food the way you like how about supporting the businesses you do enjoy? Or saving a buck and making your own food? Even more maddening at the end of that article was a picture of the blogger, enjoying the free WiFi at Starbucks. Typical.

Again, thank you. Bookmarking this for later!

morkiemama

Saving for reference

kittyr77

wow. just wow.
Im not sure what shocked me the most. probably that AIDS is caused by the psychological stress of having HIV - UNBELIEVABLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

zenalasca

The sad thing is that there IS some truth in what Mercola says and intelligent people like my dad are whole heartedly conned into buying his products (from Australia no less).

oedipa_maas

Thank you for the links. I've been looking for more anti-quackery/pro-science sites.