Who would have thought something so trivial would generate so much amusement? I told you all to vote on Twitter for DrRachie, because there was a bunch of quacks in the lead. The kook formerly in the #1 position, the “Health Ranger”, has flamed out hysterically. Now the #2 quack, some guy named Mercola, is showing similar signs of cracking.
Dr. Mercola explained the situation himself in a Facebook post, “An arrogant group of science bloggers that have vilified me for the past few years have started a campaign to have an Australian shill to win a health award on Twitter. This overweight non-physician has arrogantly bashed nearly every alternative therapy and encourages reliance on drugs.”
Perhaps tomorrow I’ll be able to report back that Mercola is now rocking back and forth in a corner, shouting “She’s a fatty fat fat fattie!”. At least he’s following the same trend of blatantly lying about the position of real skeptics and physicians.
I dunno if you saw it, PZ, but Mike Adams wrote a response to your response to his response. In short: everything is magical and skeptics are stupid.
I find the sneering reference to DrRachie’s weight a bit puzzling. Normally, the alternative health care folks like to frame themselves as more compassionate and sensitive than those who use cold science and ‘Western medicine.’ They whine and whine about the “tone” of their critics, and the dangers of negative thinking. So I would have thought that a popular advocate would have stayed far away from saying anything about one of the Bad Guys that might trip one of his fan’s hyper-sensitive sympathy meters.
Perhaps I’m underestimating, though, how much alties like to blame the victims of disease and ill-health for failing to eat and exercise right. Not of course like them — what with their aerobics and yoga and diet of raw vegetables and crunchy granola, they’ll never get sick. The ones who don’t do that, deserve everything they get.
For people who are supposed to be so attuned to the harmony and love of benevolent Nature — they sure are mean.
@Destlund: If that’s true, why the hell are my feet still attached to the ground?
Can’t they dilute some gravity to make me fly?
The DI’s smears of the honest and competent are slicker.
Otherwise, same level of nastiness.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p
@MichelleR, of course they can. You just have to get beyond the illusions of your rational mind and realize that you’re flying already. Why can’t you people understand these things?!
Dr. Rachie looks fine to me, sexy even. She’s well-rounded, but not obese. Mercola must have psychological issues that cause him to misjudge appropriate body weights for women. Either that, or he is incapable of appreciating a wide range of human body types. His loss.
Why does Mercola put the “Dr.” label in front of his name for all his tweets and posts? Is he afraid no one will believe him?
If Dr. Rachael is considered “fat” then I give up, man. She looks fine to me.
@Destlund: I’m sorry. I swear I overdiluted my acid in plenty of water but somehow it doesn’t seem to work as hard as it should!
Hmmm I thought the weight reference was to you PZ.
MAN THE HARPOONS!!!!!
lol
Oh for crying out loud, I just read the article deslund linked to at #1, and it’s hard to take in the density of this so-called ‘response.’ Here is how he explains our anger:
Who the heck gets “infuriated” — let alone upset — by being “reminded” of what they believe? Could I really piss off the Catholics by going over to one of their sites and posting the Nicene Creed? Would homeopaths wax wroth over someone telling them Hahnemann’s theory? You’d think that Mike Adams would at least have noted that the skeptics were insisting that he got it wrong. The way he’s written the article, it sound as if we are upset about being exposed.
Oh, he probably thinks he’s also exposing us to ourselves. “Yes you do believe this crap. Yes you do. You believe every word of it. I’m telling you. This is what you say, all the time. I don’t have to show you where.”
Ah, the heaving personal insults at your nemesis. The sign that you are completely and utterly out of rational arguments for your positions.
Sorry, Mercola. Game over. You are PWNED.
I read Mercola’s Facebook posting and then voted for him:
I nominate @mercola for a Shorty Award in #quackery because he’s bald! Do you see how bald he is! And he’s a quack…
About the weight issue. For years I used veganism/raw food as a way to be anorexic. It’s a great defense mechanism if anyone tries to take you to a shrink.
So maybe he just thinks any woman with a waist size over 20 inches is fatty mcfatfat with some lard sauce.
These quacks just can’t handle dissent. They surround themselves with like-minded individuals and label anybody who disagrees as a “pharma shill” or “slave to propaganda.” They’re so self absorbed, so used to unquestioning acceptance from their followers, that they can’t believe that anybody could hear their arguments and not immediately agree with them.
It doesn’t matter that they don’t make any logical sense, and are just parroting the same disproven garbage; in their own little world, it’s all true. By reversing this poll, we’ve managed to shatter their sad little world, and their psyche just can’t handle it.
The question is, why is this poll different? Is it the fact that there’s an award attached, or because it’s run by a third party? We destroy polls all the time, and I haven’t seen many reactions on this level.
This is getting fun. I like watching the quacks retreat deeper and deeper into the fantasy land of their own enormous egos and delusions.
Other than that, however, it’s quite telling when someone is reduced to calling someone fat.
Well Sastra, it is significant I think that he provides not one single link to skeptics gnashing their teeth over being exposed for their real beliefs. Probably because that link would immediately prove him wrong, or at least it would in the case of this blog where his arguments were mocked and shredded in appropriate intervals.
No Mr. Health Ranger Sir, that is NOT what skeptics believe. The first objective is understanding you opponent’s position. You seem to have failed that. Now it is time for you to wet your pants. Go ahead. We’re already laughing :P
Sastra @ 2:
Not only is it puzzling, it’s just plain wrong. DrRachie looks fantastic.
#1 – had a brief look, apparently redefining what “magic” means is a great way to validate your world view – hence water, quantum mechanics, gravity – are all magical.
Which I guess means that they are all capable of whatever you want them to be capable of. Which is nice.
Now to persuade someone that this rock, this one right here, has a gravitational memory of *insert disease here* and that by sleeping 1/3 of your body length away from it (this is important, as this is the wavelength of your own gravitronic energy waves, if you want interaction) you’ll probably be cured. Unless you don’t believe, or unless you subject the methodology to a double blind study (which clearly wouldnt be fair, as who are we to determine which other substances have been gravitationally memorized by the rock prior to its introduction into the experiment!)
$500 a week for rock calibration and useage.
You seem to have scored direct hits on the two most celebrated wackaloons in the alt-med goofosphere.
For reference: Mike Adams is the guy who acquired the ability to “[photo-read] books at the speed of one page per second”, among other superhuman abilities, thanks to his all-natural lifestyle.
And Mercola … well, did you know that you can satisfy all your nutritional needs by staring directly at the sun?
I. Shit. You. Not.
Yeah, the jab at Rachie’s weight was rather unkind.
Amazing that someone could actually get so worked up over something so infinitely trivial as a Twitter award.
How petty. Even his “supporters” were telling him it was uncool to mention her weight (not that the good doc is fat–she isn’t).
Maybe I need to get these guys on a comic’s shit list. I have a pipeline to Gabriel Iglesias. How fun would it be to have him making fun of these woomeisters?
@Jre:
…And here I thought you could just see the virgin mary in the sun.
*sigh*
after reading that, I absolutely not expecting DrRachie to be that skinny. I actually went out of the way to google her to figure out if somewhere out there there might be pictures of her where she doesn’t look as skinny as she does.
dude has some a seriously distorted view of what a healthy woman is supposed to look like if he thinks that’s anywhere near “overweight” :-/
I think that pretty much sums it up. she’s “fat”, i.e. doesn’t want to/doesn’t know how to take care of herself, therefore her advice on how to stay healthy cannot be taken seriously.
Mercola? A staple at Quackwatch? The one the FDA had to order to stop making fraudulent claims?
This bald quack couldn’t handle a band-aid for a papercut.
Hey hey hey, what on earth is wrong with reliance on drugs? What would the world be without caffeine? What would college students be without caffeine? And what about booze, BOOZE! Plus who could really live without knowing Purple Haze while blazed? This “anti-reliance on drug” message is rather dangerous, it could threaten the livelihood of college students across the world. I won’t stand for it! Instead I’ll sit. In a chair. And post on pharyngula. That’ll teach those kooks. ^_^
@#3.
No no, study some homeopathy… if you were to dilute gravity until there’s none of it left in the water, gravity would get stronger
*smirk*.
Dumbasses, the whole facking lot.
From the comment section there…
The irony here, the lack of even the faintest grasp of history and the influence vaccination has had on the human lifespan, is dumbfounding.
Hmmm, I just realised that looked like I was calling you all dumbasses. Which was not my intention… my intention was to call *THEM* (The alt-med ppl) dumbasses. :).
Sorry about the mixup :D.
that was my first thought, too. Most of the emo-vegans around here are stick-figures. If that’s how the vast majority of his followers looks like, no wonder he has a distorted image of what a healthy woman looks like
Quantum mechanics is magical, because we don’t fully understand it? Quantum fucking mechanics?
I really wish alt-whackos would stop using QM to “explain” their woo. Entanglement does not explain water memory, because water memory has never been demonstrated! There’s no reason to suppose water has a memory, let alone base an hypothesis on it. Let alone attempt to use entanglement to explain it. That’s like saying that cream pies explain the magical horn of unicorns, fer fuck sake.
I am grrrrrrring as hard as I can in his general direction.
http://www.quackwatch.org/11Ind/mercola.html
Too funny. BTW the Shorty’s are doing a vote audit today. Now we’ll really see how many of Mercola’s votes are legit.
Ah, Joe “kill your babies” Mercola – he’s always good to laugh at. He whines, bitches, and moans while vilifying the people he falsely claims to be vilifying him. Twitter needs an “#Asshat” category for Mercola; “Health Ranger” can have the “#Kook” award. Mercola calls himself “Dr.” but seems to have been trained a few centuries ago – my dad would say “he must have been an intern at the Mayo Clinic”.
Someone made a beautiful comment in the previous thread, noting that the alt-med crowd wished to ‘re-enchant the world’. It was such a lovely turn of phrase that I felt it deserved repeating.
MadScientist you could create an #asshat category simply by casting a nomination. :)
Why can’t you eat healthily AND be vaccinated against disease?
These naturopaths just have a major grudge against what they consider to be “big brother”.
They certainly have discovered how to play upon the fear and paranoia of the foolish.
Read #1’s link.
Ah, so useful to describe every occurrence or characteristic as ‘magical’. I can’t believe these guys don’t have more Nobel prizes.
What really burned me up was this passage:
Up until ‘the way the universe works’, right on. The last phrase is only true in the sense that he would have ‘discovered’ that homeopathy is nonsense.
Keep your idiotic ideas in your own followers mouths, don’t try to stuff them into our dead heroes!
No matter if she’s fat or not, a person’s weight has fuck-all to do with their knowledge of science and/or medicine. And once a person has resorted to criticizing someone’s weight, it’s pretty clear that they have absolutely nothing of substance to say. Interesting that he also seems to use “Australian” as a pejorative term; playing on the xenophobia of his followers?
re Kathy @ 36:
Exactly. Maybe they should look up Feynman’s coining the phrase “cargo cult science” to get a sense of what I think his attitude towards homeopathy would have been.
…which explains why I have never seen, nor will I never see a unicorn.
Fat or not (and DrRachie is definitely not fat), the point of this award is to award people who are strong voices in the Health field. She is because she *actually knows* how medicine works and points out the idiocy of homeopathy. Quacks like the two “alternative medicine” peddlers who’ve already thrown their fits are the medical equivalents of Creationists, ceaselessly complaining that their quackery isn’t taken seriously by the “big bad mean” scientific community.
I don’t even understand why these quacks are getting so worked up about this Twitter award. I think PZ put it best in his previous post about these silly people: to them, it’s an infinitely diluted Nobel Prize. Gah.
re Kathy @ 36:
And another thing; Feynman’s admonition that science it designed to keep us from fooling people, especially ourselves as yourself is the easiest person to fool. [I know the grammar of that sentence is awful, sorry, I hope the point comes across regardless].
Talk about a snake-oil salesman…
Dr. Mercola’s Magic elixirs!!
http://products.mercola.com/
Carlie #37 wrote:
He’s probably trying to imply that the skeptics had to go all the way to the Ends of the Earth to dig up some competition.
Those followers who are sophisticated enough to know the earth is not flat, though, will be reminded that down there they walk around upside down. How could you trust in someone like that?
Ugh… what a stupid reply that post #1 linked to. “Feyman [sic] was unusually open-minded for a scientist.”
First off, you’d think if you like the guy so much, you could spell his name right. But perhaps that’s just magical thinking on my part?
Secondly, why is open-mindedness considered such a wonderful trait among these folks?
I’m not open-minded to the possibility of being able to pass through a wall by running into it very fast and expecting all that empty space between my atoms and the atoms of the wall to somehow matter (lame pun intended). I’m not open-minded to the possibility of being able to fly by leaping off a tall building. I’ll let people tripping on LSD keep that possibility to themselves. I’m not open-minded to the possibility that black people are an inherently inferior group, and ignorant racists can keep that possibility far away from me. I’m not open-minded to the possibility that homosexuality is a moral evil. That one belongs to extremists, and I’m certainly not open-minded enough to be that extreme. I’m not open-minded to the possibility that Jews are vermin. Many times over the course of human history, including present day, we’ve seen just how great for the human condition that particular open-mindedness is. Feh.
These people love open-mindedness so much, they should really take a history course to see how much open-mindedness among the citizens of a country has done for the world.
Give me skeptically-minded over open-minded any day of the week. Skeptical minds have found the difference between real cures and placebos. Skeptical minds have found that, for the most part, all groups of human beings – no matter how you want to categorize them – are roughly equal. Skeptical minds put humanity on the moon. Skeptical minds figured out that people should wash their hands before delivering a baby. Skeptical minds save more lives, improve our standard of living better, and uncover more truths about the universe than any open mind ever has.
“Well Sastra, it is significant I think that he provides not one single link to skeptics gnashing their teeth over being exposed for their real beliefs.”
At least Ken Ham quotes people (without attribution, but still).
I nearly rolled my eyes out of the back of my head at his whole “magic” spiel. It’s pretty much the usual co-opting of real human feelings (awe at the universe, natural curiosity, etc.) to the service of made-up crap (religion, magic, etc.) Apparently it’s just too boring for like, way spiritual blissed-out folks to learn that water expands as it freezes due to its unique molecular shape and the attractive forces between its component atoms.
“It’s MAGIC!”
“No, it’s just because of such-and-such…”
“Exactly! MAGIC! And therefore it must also do THESE super-amazing magic things!”
“Well, no, we don’t have any reason to believe that-”
“You’re such a BUMMER!”
I see a big problem in the Education category of the Shorty Awards. The top two are not only a televangelist and a fugitive, but the same person too.
Mercola has been an effing nut for years. Not surprising in the least.
JRE @19: So if you follow Mercola’s advice about staring into the sun will you still be able to read a page per second? (Incidentally, I once read War and Peace in five hours, and was eating processed foods and drinking sugary drinks while doing so. So go ahead, folks. Munch on those Pringles.)
From the HealthRanger’s site: Instantly grasping the “big picture” of any concept, including quantum computing, nanotechnology, homeopathy, the politics of medicine, etc.
Uh, huh. That’s why you are bringing in the big bucks by writing crap for other people go all cargo cult on. It’s the Recipe-Driven Life: see somebody who looks “successful” and emulate their most superficial behaviours.
Ya know, I’m not gonna argue that being in good physical condition isn’t a boon to creativity. Because it is. But somebody has failed to grasp the “big picture” if he thinks that good physical condition can be created just by following specific diets and exercising. Saying he can reverse diabetes is pretty damn irresponsible.
His list of behaviours:
# Absolutely no prescription drugs or pharmaceuticals whatsoever. (Am I at least allowed yams for my birth control, o wise one? I don’t suppose you have a list of foods that will give me a 99% chance of not concieving, alleviate crippling menstrual pain, lower my chances of certain cancers, and allow me to control my flow? No?)
# No visits to M.D.s or western medical doctors (visiting naturopathic physicians only)
(If I’d followed this advice when I was 17, I’d be crippled, if not dead, today when I broke my right femur and left clavicle in the same freak accident.)
# No following the USDA’s ridiculous Food Guide Pyramid (What’s ridiculous about it? It gets refined every few years to take in account new info.)
# No steroids, andro supplements or other questionable bodybuilding supplements
(Except the steroids that let me breathe. Not all steroid use is for weight-lifting, idiot.)
# No diet pills, stimulants or fat burning pills
(Okay, a stopped clock, and all that.)
# No fad dieting (Physician, fucking heal thyself. Do you see your list of foods? What the fuck do you think a fad diet IS?)
Aquaria, #21:
Agreed. I think Eddie Izzard would be a great comedian to take on these charlatans.
I’m resisting the temptation to direct message him on Twitter.
Well they are both peeved cos they are not top doggies in anything…goes without saying.
But what really dinged their bell was the fact that woo is losing out…therefore their income…that is what rattles them to bark and whine so!
#21 and #49
Dara O’Briain! Check out his youtube clip where he tears homeopathy apart as part of his routine. It’s magnificent!
god (heh) how I love it when the loons take stuff so seriously on the intarwebz.
I mean, honestly, does the Shorty Award come with a million bucks prize or what? Why does it irk them so much that there are more of us than them?
Reason FTW!
My batshit crazy aunt has a Kangen Water Machine.
Aunt Arlene: I’ve sold 4 machines so far.
me: arlene, its a pyramid scheme.
AA: it cures arthritis.
me: the magic water machine does not cure arthritis, or anything else.
AA: it cured my arthritis.
me: arlene, its a pyramid scheme.
AA: no, its multi level marketing.
me: that’s what I just told you.
AA: …huh?
If she’s fat then I’m a magic space banana.
What’s with all the hating on her weight and qualifications? Doesn’t she have a decent PhD from a decent university (i.e. not the fake, diploma mill/self-cert shit not-worth-the-paper-they-are-printed-on quack “qualifications” rampant in the alt med world)? I was unaware that only physicians were competent to judge alt med claims. A 16 year old with a decent grade in GCSE chemistry could refute the claims of homeopathy (for example) completely. If said 16 year old had take physics too I reckon they could extend that refutation to magnet therapy, crystal therapy etc.
The quack’s meltdown moment is the very definition of an argumentum ad hominem coupled to false accusations and strawmen. Classy and rhetoricalicious!
Louis
P.S. And I see from #1 that this Adams bloke is appropriating Feynman to his cause. Oh dear. Were Feynman alive I think he might disagree. This was, after all, the man who (despite experiments with altered consciousness and drugs etc which might convince the simple that he was woowoo friendly) wrote “Cargo Cult Science”.
What’s with all the hating on her weight and qualifications?
When morons like Adams and Mercola got absolutely nothing, they naturally fall back on grade-school insults. It’s amazing they haven’t challenged her to a fight after school.
I don’t. It’s very typical.
In any case, it’s good to see that Joe Mercola has revealed himself to be J.B. Handley.
“Storm” by Tim Minchin
For those of you who haven’t heard it yet.
If I used Twitter, which I don’t, I would vote for DrRachie because Medieval medicine was eliminated for a good reason.
It’s funny that people are voting her for #Quackery because of support for proven effective(90%+) medical practices like vaccines.
It’s really shocking sometimes how incredibly stupid people are.
re: the Kangen water machines reminded me of the Revigator. The Revigator was a radium-lined water jug that dispensed radiation-infused water for a health craze in the early 1900s.
http://www.boingboing.net/2010/01/21/radium-water-actuall.html
While I was musing on that, Tobias Buckell mentioned via his Twitter account that oxygen bars might be harmful to one’s health. (I haven’t looked into it, but I was looking for other examples of stuff people used to think was swell and spiffy, but discovered could actually harm you.) At the very least, the benefits aren’t what they are touted to be, and your wallet is lighter for it.
Colloidal silver falls in that category. The harm is mostly aesthetic, when your skin goes gray, but you can also experience loss of smell. But the biggest hit is again, to the wallet.
Wait, did a Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine (NOT a Medical Doctor) just disparage a PhD in cellular biology?
And call her fat?
What a douchebag.
I only know one person who is into homeopathy.
1. She has a Ph.D. in a social science. Not stupid.
2. She is crazy. Married 5 times at least, all short and unhappy.
3. She is thin. More to the point, she is way too thin. A bag of bones.
She is at high risk of osteoporosis at the least. Possibly dying. One woman was anorexic for a few decades. Dead, even tube feeding couldn’t save her.
Can’t they dilute some gravity to make me fly?
This only demonstrates the ignorance of the whole allopathic crowd. If you dilute gravity it will make you heavier. Sheesh.
“There was a time when my living room walls were hung with pictures of Nicolaus Copernicus, Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, and galaxies on a scale so vast and a time frame so enormous, that, as human beings, we could comprehend them only through the mediation of mathematics. In my den, I had photographs showing evolution in the development of a fetus, what people call ‘ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny’ in which, in its early stages, the fetus has gills and a tail, and then abbreviated appendages similar to an amphibian, and evolves into what first appears to be a mammal and finally becomes a human being.
My bedroom was decorated with figurines, beginning with a Gorilla, followed by a furry creature with its head thrust forward, its jaw protruding, its eyes buried deep under its heavy brows, its face flat, its teeth splayed, then moving on to depictions of homo erectus, Neanderthal man, Cro-Magnon man, and finally a man standing fully upright wearing a three-piece business suit, carrying a briefcase, an umbrella tucked under one arm.
I attended the Atheists International convention every year, where atheists from all over the world would convene. At these meeting, there were speeches and symposia and workshops and breakout sessions, and literature was handed out, and there was a gift shop where you could buy chips of meteorites, replicas of Homo Erectus skeletons, fossils excavated from archeological sites and books about the cruelty and violence of religion—the Great Crusades, the burning of heretics, the licentious, greedy, vengeful, war-making, palace-dwelling Popes, and how the Medieval monasteries were rife with homosexuality and the convents were thinly veiled venues for prostitution.
In the auditorium last night, listening to the keynote speaker address the audience about the absurdity of faith, I thought about Madeleine. She was an extraordinary woman, educated, beautiful, a talented watercolorist, a brilliant cook. But even now, years later, I couldn’t forget that winter in Palm Beach, the night we were at the Boca de Cristo, and I saw her staring at Sandro…” ~Joe Frank
Married 5 times at least, all short and unhappy. – raven
The marriages or the husbands?
I nominate @mercola for a Shorty Award in #quackery because he’s bald! – mercola
He’s not bald! That’s just a homeopathic hairstyle!
Not that it matters, but I read the quote a few times and think he was saying PZ was a fatty. That so-far puts us in a minority of two.
I could go all comrade diddy o’prof on you and claim your assuming the ‘fat’ thing was directed at DrRachie make _you_ sexist, but I won’t because that would be just as typically stupid as they are.
also, percyprune, where’s your evidence that the world was enchanted to begin with, or at all, ever? Perhaps you meant ‘beguiled’. That would be more accurate as it means deceived more than it means magical.
“We’re sorry, the site owner has blocked you from joining this site.”
I guess trying to explain why the votes were thrown out will get you blocked from his site. I guess I shouldn’t have expected better.
I’ve tried to vote on the shortyawards.com site but my vote doesn’t show up. Using my valid Twitter account, so I don’t know what’s wrong…
Dr. Mercola appears to have never heard that
“fat bottomed girls make the rockin’ world go ’round”.
Then we discover Dr. Rachie may not even be fat!
What are we to believe from the DO who is the expert on all things and has the stones to disparage a PhD and a real cellular biologist?
Fuckin’ nothing, The same as the truth content of his list of what atheists believe.
Adams… Mercola…
“GET IN T’FOOKIN’ SACK!”
Sastra (#10)
He’s so the Ray Comfort of medicine.
re 66:
I thought so too at first, but dissecting the paragraph makes it more ambiguous.
“An arrogant group of science bloggers that have vilified me for the past few years have started a campaign to have an Australian shill to win a health award on Twitter. This overweight non-physician has arrogantly bashed nearly every alternative therapy and encourages reliance on drugs”
First he refers to a group of bloggers, and an “Australian shill”. Then finally “this non-physician…”, singular.
So I think the “non-physician” does refer to the “Australian shill” and not to the “group of science bloggers”. If he had written “a certain science blogger …” then the last sentence might be directed at PZ and not Dr. Rachie.
He’s not bald! That’s just a homeopathic hairstyle!
ROFLSTOMP!
“…a fatty fat fat fatty!”
reminds me of:
These quacks deem themselves superior on account of their ability to make potions and cast spells and call themselves “holistic” when it is apparent to everyone else that they really mean ass-holistic.
I love Dr. Rachie! If the best you can do is come up with a description of someone’s weight, you clearly have nothing intelligent to say. You rock, Rachie!
Seriously, I love watching these psychos stomp all over their own good names! Yay skepticism!
HJ
While we’re all voting for @DrRachie in the #health category I notice that there is also a #science category.
Right now top of the voting is Adam Savage with just 540 or so votes.
Someone named ‘Phil Plait’ is also on the list.
Personally I think the numbers here are truly pathetic and we should really do something about making sure that science gets the attention it deserves.
Vote early. Vote often.
He’s not bald! That’s just a homeopathic hairstyle!
how bout:
He’s not anorexic, just well diluted!
You’re very probably right, SteveM.
Remember, this religion like others lives on ‘we are different than them’ and ‘we know the truth’ so don’t expect too much from the alt med religion. Getting advice from these alt med quacks is like watching late night infomercials and believing every word. They do make money from every page they type so expect them to keep this up for some time. These folks are worse than the creationists because the alt med folks make money directly by scamming people.
‘Dr.’ Mercola is a living, breathing cautionary tale. If one’s mind is too open, one’s brain is in danger of falling out. Such as it is.
I would also like to add my voice to the condemnation of the ‘overweight’ jibe. As a person of…generous proportion myself, I would like to point out that weight and intellect or professional scientific and medical capacity are entirely unrelated.
Let us not forget that the world is full of morons of all permutations of body morphology. Mercola being a sterling case in point.
frisbeetarian @80:
Yeah, Sastra said something similiar on the previous thread. Alt med is homoepathic religion: All the harmful and dangerous anti-science canards diluted down to their purest, wooiest “kumbaya nature granola mountain earth pals” mindset. Ugh.
In certain ways, it could definitely be seen as the liberal counterpart to the religious right (thankfully much less influential and popular).
Mike Adams,
Grrrrr……
*begins to red*
*begins to green*
*grows three times in size*
SMASH!!1! SMASH!!1!
That’s a misconception. A DO is every bit a “medical doctor” these days. There is very little difference in curriculum between MD and DO schools, and both degrees carry the same rights and priveleges. Perhaps a bit of residual woo in there too, but way de-emphasized.
I shall cry myself to sleep knowing the Health Danger has blocked me from his website. Snivel!
eh, it’s at leat arguably ridiculous because its recommendations are heavily…mmm…influeced? by various agricultural lobbies (note that it ain’t the NIH or the USDNutrition doing the recommending).
(By the way, have you checked out the latest version? IT DOESN’T EVEN HAVE ANYTHING TO DO WITH A FUCKING PYRAMID ANY MORE! They should sack up and call it the Food Guide Pie Chart and make it at least easier to interpret. Of course, the little clipart dude running up the side would have to be put on a hamster-wheel kind of arrangement…)
Compare to the Harvard Public Health version.
And both are professional degrees, not terminal degrees. If there were ever a disagreement between an MD/DO and a PhD in that field, I would assume that the PhD is correct unless proven false. The training for medicine is not science.
Wow. Not only do they seem to lack any critical thinking skills, but are also missing the senses of proportion and good taste…
http://www.naturalnews.com/026330_cancer_NaturalNews_Billy_Best.html
Free Lunch: I agree 100% with that.
Was focusing on a detail.
Oh my *god*.
I find it highly ironic that someone post the following:
he should stick a fork into an outlet, using proper heavy shielded and rubberized gloves of course, and tell me what comes shooting out the socket.
It is obviously the illusionory appearence of being electrocuted.
He is correct that our ancient, naive image of the elctron as a tiny marble orbiting the nucleus is incorrect. That however does not mean that it does not “actually exist in reality”. No it is not a “cloud of probabilities”. That “cloud” represents not the particle but our probability of detecting it at that location. He is confusing a topographic map for the actual terrain (so to speak).
Fastest way to spot a con-man is to call him one.
If he reacts with a burst of outrage and lashes out at you then you’ve got one.
Aww, you just know how much Mercola was counting on hanging his utterly meaningless internet poll award prominently in his office.
I’ve done some work in the past for a WOO peddler or two. Try designing an electrical plan for the new office of someone who insists that common 16v. D.C. smoke and/or heat detectors give off “harmful” (to their gullible patients) magnetic fields. (and want them covered by tin foil after installation so that they are functionally non-functional, really, swear to dog it’s the truth.) I don’t even want to talk about or remember the battles over light fixtures…
SIWOTI syndrome compels me to state that, although I haven’t bothered googling her and could therefore be wrong, Dr Dunlop’s head-and-shoulders photo strongly suggests she’s not fat even for my taste.
It goes without saying that I agree with comment 72.
and want them covered by tin foil after installation
*ding*
I haz money makin’ idr!
create “farady cages” for smoke alarms!
simple aluminum baffles that one could affix on top of a smoke detector that would allow air easily to pass, but baffle “harmful” radiation!
Oh Dr. Mercola….
I have an idea for you to market!
whee! Now i will be a rich and happy miser, and make woo peddlers and their wallet tossing sycophants even happier with yet another worthless but shiny gadget!
:P
@Sven : Thanks for the info. :) I admit I hadn’t checked it out in a few years, but my last recollection was that it tended heavily towards leafy greens, which I had no quarrel with. *looking over the Harvard one now*
@ #95 Ichthyic
Go for it, you’ll probably sell more than you would think. Of course you will have to find a prominent WOO peddler and pay them to endorse your product in the “trade” and home woo publications.
Just mix “scientificy” sounding terms with “Gaia” sounding stuff in your ads and you’ll probably sell at least a couple of hundred thousand units. Probably more now that many homes are required to have intertied smoke detectors when built.
Give them a small cage with a ground lead attached and tell them it blocks “harmful” magnetic fields. Most of them will probably get installed without the ground lead being attached to anything. Then again since they don’t actually do anything functional that won’t really matter will it?
and that boys and girls, is what we call an ad hominem
Then again since they don’t actually do anything functional that won’t really matter will it?
:)
of course not.
seriously though, if you check out Mercola’s site, it’s pretty much how he makes money, selling crap just like that!
frankly I actually would be surprised if there isn’t someone trying to market a similar device already.
nothing new under the sun and all…
still, i better put my patent application in for my “Faraday Cage for Smoke Detectors”
If anyone can think of a snappy name for it, I’ll cut you in for a percentage…
:)
Many of these lunatic fringers are also Germ Theory of Disease deniers.
Oddly enough, they sometimes die of infectious diseases.
Christine Maggiore died recently. She was HIV+ and a leader of HIV doesn’t cause AIDS movement.
Her baby daughter died young of….AIDS.
She left two survivors. No idea what their HIV status is. There is a good chance, they will both die of the same thing.
Up until the end she and her supporters knew that HIV doesn’t cause AIDS. Her flock still doesn’t get it.
Ichthyic #99 wrote:
I don’t have a name, but strongly suggest that you make it in the shape of a pyramid. The ads must explain why it is scientifically crucial that the smoke-detector-cage be in a pyramid, and make references to ancient archaeological wisdom to back that up. With a picture of the pyramids at Giza, for emphasis.
It should then have the word “pyramid” in the name.
If you stop to consider who among your friends and family would still be alive and in good working order without the benefits of modern medicine you’ll be astonished how few of them qualify!
A snappy name for your pyramid?
May I suggest . . .
“RadiaShun” implies that radiation is present, but doesn’t legally say the word. It also implies shielding, again not legally. And it says “shun” which is an old word for rejection, which should suit most woo-woosters right down to the ground.
“Pyra” gets you both pyramid, as Sastra suggests, and invokes fire which is scary, bad, magical and what the detector was supposed to protect against. “Shield” suggests knightly armor and the forces of light and darkness, without saying who is on which side.
RadiaShun PyraShield™ Cheops at twice the price.
@ #101 Sastra
That is frigging brilliant! That would definitely increase the sales volume, pulling in the Egyptophiles is absolutely a winner of an idea. Ichthyic I hope your paying attention, this could lead to semi-independent wealth, maybe even being able to afford a weekly pool cleaner or lawn maintenence. ;)
Be sure to mention the golden ratio when you sell the Faraday cage.
The presumed credulity of the readers of the anti-allopaths was pretty well summed up for me by this, from Mercola’s site:
If you needed that warning, please do scan this:
If you send me all of your money by paypal every month, you will win the lottery within the next 20 years.
Menyambal #103 wrote:
Ok, I think Ichthyic is going to have to cut you in on the percentage.
@ #103 Menyambal
Sigh, I am humbled by the presence of brilliance, now if only Billy Mays was still around to hawk it…Anthony Sullivan just cannot make the unlikely to be plausible seem quite as probable as he could. :(
The problem with breathing in pure Oxygen is with the fact that we evolved under 20% Oxygen. Breathing in pure Oxygen under the correct conditions will kill you.
To whoever wrote this. How the hell do Cathode Ray Tubes work you freaking genius? Its called an electron ray gun for a reason.
Dr Rachie is awesome (and not at all fat). She’s one of the main people in the sceptical scene down here in Oz, along with good folks like Richard Saunders and Kylie Sturgess.
If this whole Shorty thing gets more Australians to check out her blog (scepticsbook.com) that would be great. It might even save a few lives.
Ha! Your silly Faraday cages for smoke detectors won’t make you a penny! My ferrite toroid flux ring is vastly superior, and will totally dominate the market. The high (10000) permeability ferrite perfectly concentrates the magnetic flux, preventing it from spreading and being diluted (dilution, of course, would result in exponential increase of evil efficacy). And the toroids are really pretty when I get them coated with polyurethane.
I wonder if these twits are aware of the fact that ionizing-type smoke detectors actually have genuine radioactive sources in them.
There probably really is a fortune to be made selling the gullible ferrite tile linings for their houses. The people at FairRite would love the business. There is very sound science (not, I suppose, that that would matter) behind ferrite-lined rooms for shielding.
Forgive me if I’m wrong, because honestly I never cared that much, but I thought people went to Oxygen bars to get kind of high because breathing pure oxygen will mess with your brain. I have no idea because I never cared enough to even look into it. If I were going to breath gas to get high I’d probably go for nitrous oxide anyway. But I have disliked it every time I’ve used it (mostly at a dentist’s) so actually I’ll just have a glass of Scotch.
So yesterday I leave a comment on Mike Adam’s article “What ‘skeptics’ really believe”, and I go back today looking for replies, but when I try to sogn in, I get this:
“We’re sorry, the site owner has blocked you from joining this site.”
And my comment has disappeared.
All I did was ask him to back up his assertions.
Let’s sell ’em some faraday cages for their wireless access points, too. And tell ’em about the evils of ethernet.
If they have to use dialup, I bet we see a lot less of ’em.
Mercola’s interest here is in being “award-winning” Joe Mercola. It would be worth an extra 0.5% in sales.
From Mike Adams’ Quack Miranda . . .
And now the post I got blocked for . . .
Chickenshit. Chickenshit. Chickenshit. Hiding down in central America where lawyers can’t get at you. I’ve had to talk my sister down from stupid article after stupid article on your website. She has fibroids and a cyst on one ovary and she’s listening to you, putting off surgery against doctor’s advice and taking some mushroom crap you peddle. You sir, are a piece of shit. Oh, I meant fat piece of shit. You tell the terrified what they want to hear. You also counter your Quack Miranda, telling people to not go to the (real) doctor or take life saving prescription medications. You, Mike Adams, are not just evil, you’re credulous, avaricious evil.
Tim MInchin is one of my heroes. @57 linked Storm. Here is my favorite Minchin song.
While trying to post over at Health DeRanger’s website I came across this lovely sentiment . . .
Ladies and gentlemen, the thinly cloaked hate speech of John Holding!
There is simply nothing I can add to that.
(emphasis mine)
Oh shit, it gets better! This one’s from “Lou”
Okay, I’ll stop, but this loopy post sums the batshit crazy up nicely . . .
The devil wears no clothes? WTF?
“When you have no basis of argument, abuse the plaintiff”
Cicero (106 BC – 43 BC)
Mercola has a thing about Australians:
http://www.ratbags.com/rsoles/comment/mercola.htm
What can I say – other than from down here – even we can smell his BS…
Pareidolius @ 119;
You see, this is how we know the devil is truly evil – he is a ‘librul noodist’!
Won’t somebody think of the children!
*clutches pearls*
He’s doing it again:
http://www.naturalnews.com/028019_skeptics_thinking.html
“One such skeptic accused me of being a quack because he said that I believe “water is magical.” Was that supposed to be an insult? I do think water is magical!”
It shouldn’t really be necessary to say anything.
I think the internet is magical! The internet *is* magical. It has properties. It has behaviors. It has porn. Ergo, magical!
Sigh. When the skeptic accused Health Ranger of thinking water was magical, it is clear from context that they meant Health Ranger was attributing properties to water that are not supported by facts. Thus the term “magical”.
Health Ranger then goes on to distort the context by using “magical” as a synonym for nifty instead of “scientifically unlikely”, while pointing out “magical” things water does….ALL of which had a scientific basis he was ignoring. (We KNOW why cohesion/adhesion allows water to seemingly defy gravity. We know why the polar covalent bonding lets water act in certain ways inside the cell and elsewhere. It’s not magical nor miraculous, even if it is nifty.) But Health Ranger implies that water has other properties as yet undiscovered and that he’s merely tapping into these undiscovered properties. Isn’t water “magical” he repeats again while conflating the known scientific properties of water molecules with his made-up wishful thinking properties.
My SIWOTI compels me to contradict two posts above; incredibly enough, they are the palindromic 26 & 62. WOW. Anyway, homeopathy’s “law of similars” holds that the pre-dilution remedy should be something that produces the same symptoms as the target disease, a notion with vague similarity to the actual science of vaccination. (The entire thing is based on Hahnemann experience from eating Cinchona bark this one time.)
So indeed, if homeopathy weren’t full of shit, diluted gravity would produce anti-gravitation.
(or, I should say, full of anti-shit)