Categories
Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

The “Health Ranger” Mike Adams needs your help for his wiki!

I’ve had a lot of fun over the last couple of years deconstructing the black holes of woo that a certain advocate of “natural” remedies likes to lay down on a regular basis. Yes, I’m referring to a guy named Mike Adams, who runs a website called NaturalNews.com. Indeed, Adams has made NaturalNews.com a bastion of quackery and outright wingnuttery.

Apparently that isn’t enough.

I don’t know how long it’s been around, but apparently Mike Adams is branching out. Now he’s decided that he wants to do a wiki about “natural” living. He’s calling it, appropriately enough, Naturalpedia:

Welcome to NaturalPedia.org, the free encyclopedia on natural health and natural living. This site was created (and funded) by NaturalNews.com and is designed to provide a natural alternative to Wikipedia.com, which has become too strongly influenced by drug companies and western medical biases.

Of course. So what does Adams want to do about it? This:

Please help contribute to NaturalPedia.org. Feel free to post truthful information about natural cures, natural products and natural living. Although this site is just being launched, in time it will grow to be a large and valuable resource on the kind of natural living wisdom that the FDA and other corrupt authorities would prefer to banish from the internet.

Far be it from me to turn down such a heartfelt request.

Does anyone remember Wiki4CAM? Remember how much fun people had producing scientifically accurate articles for it, or, even more amusingly, seriously hilarious parodies? Ultimately, the creators of Wiki4CAM caught on, although even now, a year later, Wiki4CAM represents a big fat FAIL, full of credulous, non-science-based articles about various “alternative” therapies.

Oddly enough, there’s very little content in Mike Adam’s Naturalpedia. Maybe we can help. All of these articles were posted last week; so maybe it’s just that Mike hasn’t had a chance to add a bunch of articles near and dear to his woo-loving heart. So maybe–just maybe–we can do for Mike Adams now what we did for Wiki4CAM and add a bit of science-based discussion of various “alternative” medicine topics. After all, we did it once before nearly a year ago.

I’m sure Mike will be grateful for the help. While we’re at it, I wonder if Wiki4CAM still needs help, too. There don’t appear to be very many articles there, even nearly a year later.

By Orac

Orac is the nom de blog of a humble surgeon/scientist who has an ego just big enough to delude himself that someone, somewhere might actually give a rodent's posterior about his copious verbal meanderings, but just barely small enough to admit to himself that few probably will. That surgeon is otherwise known as David Gorski.

That this particular surgeon has chosen his nom de blog based on a rather cranky and arrogant computer shaped like a clear box of blinking lights that he originally encountered when he became a fan of a 35 year old British SF television show whose special effects were renowned for their BBC/Doctor Who-style low budget look, but whose stories nonetheless resulted in some of the best, most innovative science fiction ever televised, should tell you nearly all that you need to know about Orac. (That, and the length of the preceding sentence.)

DISCLAIMER:: The various written meanderings here are the opinions of Orac and Orac alone, written on his own time. They should never be construed as representing the opinions of any other person or entity, especially Orac's cancer center, department of surgery, medical school, or university. Also note that Orac is nonpartisan; he is more than willing to criticize the statements of anyone, regardless of of political leanings, if that anyone advocates pseudoscience or quackery. Finally, medical commentary is not to be construed in any way as medical advice.

To contact Orac: [email protected]

21 replies on “The “Health Ranger” Mike Adams needs your help for his wiki!”

Abvel, kindly post your spam elewhere. Like Amanda’s own site for instance.

Feel free to post truthful information about natural cures, natural products and natural living.

If naturopaths have been the ones posting so far, doesn’t he mean Feel free to be the first to post truthful information about natural cures, natural products and natural living.

designed to provide a natural alternative to Wikipedia.com

A natural alternative to Wikipedia? As in not on the internet, because the internet runs on science. Evil computers and other un-natural things. Then there is all of that thinking at the expense of believing that is so un-natural.

Naturopedia – A natural venue for censorship.

Because this worked so well for Conservapedia. Bets open for the first CAM practitioner who gets banned for not agreeing to Mike Adam’s party line, like thinking that some CAM is nonsense or that the FDA are not coming with black helicopters.

@ BeccaStareyes

I always try to refer to ASchlafly’s site as Conservapaedia (or, if you like ASCII, conservapædia), as they ban non-american spelling, it irritates the users there, and it prevents it bumping up their google-meter (which they take pride in – part of that “no such thing as bad publicity” thing).

*snorts*

Translation: Wikipedia lets people who disagree with Adams edit articles, and requires actual citations. So Adams wants to take his ball and go home.

Fine by me. Should make life easier for Wikpedia editors, too.

A stern warning from The Health (de)Ranger’s own intro . . .

NaturalPedia.org will always remain free. It is the online encyclopedia for the People, not for corporations. Please help us keep this information free and truthful by contributing your own knowledge and helping to remove any pro-Pharma disinformation (or pro chemo, pro disease mongering, etc.) that might be placed here by people working for the disease industry.

When a website welcomes you by displaying critical thinking skills of this caliber, well, you just gotta pitch in and help out=]

I figure you don’t really need to edit any of the primary content, just add “[citation needed]” after every few sentences. It gets our point across, without being something he can actually challenge as a violation of his policies short of just coming out and admitting that there is no evidence. Sowing doubt about doubt, if you will…

But Mystyk, that would require him to believe that data are necessary. In that sphere, anecdotes and ancient wisdom are better than data!

How about we just make up stuff and attribute it to some obscure archaesociety and flood their pages with content. It would be just as valid.

But doesn’t Mike Adams have an army of demented wackaloons citizen journalists to fill up his wiki for him?

Adams, forever harping on “corporations”….isn’t he just a “set” of corporations himself? Seriously, these woo-meisters who carry on about Big Pharma,”greedy” doctors,and so forth,aren’t just selling purely for “karmic reward”.I found out total sales for another high profile woo-provider: between $1 and $10 million per year,his own web site led me to infer it was between $1 and $5 million (sources:spoke.com.;Gary Null’s Stimulus Package @ Gary Null.com).I know that they have expenses,payroll, marketing firms,coteries of lawyers,even so, do you think they earn(net) what an average American, even an average American MD earns?

Emerson, do you know how to read? Have you bothered to read this blog? Do you know what a surgeon is?

Sure I know how to read and what a surgeon is, but that doesn’t stop you from been ignorant and probably is the reason for you not trying to open your eyes for the power of the big-pharma.

Have you got a PMID for that claim?

Why do you feel the need to put down people who are less intelligent than yourself? (assuming that’s what I am, and it ‘may’ be reasonable to assume there is a 50% chance you are right).

deb, that was totally unnecessary to post on an almost two year old article.

Comments are closed.

Discover more from RESPECTFUL INSOLENCE

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading