Oh, Forbes, home to quite a few bloggers I respect, like Steve Salzberg, Peter Lipson, Britt Hermes, and several others, why do you do this to me? Sure, not all Forbes bloggers are great. There are even a few, particularly a couple of the tech bloggers (I’m talking to you, Ewan Spence, in particular) who are awful. Rarely, however, have I seen a post as riddled with pseudoscience as this one on Forbes by Courtney Porkoláb. Whom do I have to blame for this? Why, Tim Caulfied, of course! He couldn’t resist Tweeting this out about someone named Charlie Goldsmith:
Holy biofield bunk, Batman! Legitimizing energy healing? WTF? @forbes @C_Porkolab https://t.co/WC369WQxDk Yes, quantum physics is mentioned (& mangled). Yes, poorly controlled "feasibility" study is used. Yes, testimonials treated as evidence. @skepticpedi @DrJenGunter @gorskon
— Timothy Caulfield (@CaulfieldTim) November 14, 2017
Yes, there’s a new energy healing quack in town.
Charlie Goldsmith: Credulity everywhere!
The article by Porkoláb, Does Energy Healing Work? Watch ‘Healer’ Charlie Goldsmith And Decide For Yourself, to which Caulfield referred is indeed a flaming piece of pseudoscience richly deserving of a heaping helping of not-so-Respectful Insolence. All it takes for anyone who knows anything about medicine and physics to come to this realization is to read the first three paragraphs of Porkoláb’s post:
Does energy healing work? Charlie Goldsmith knows it does and—if seeing is believing—he’ll make you a believer with his new show, The Healer on TLC.
But this isn’t smoke and mirrors. The Australian energy healer, who reluctantly discovered his talent at the ripe age of 18, is now on a mission to take energy medicine mainstream. To date, Goldsmith has volunteered his time—and talents—to two scientific studies. An additional double-blind study is slated for 2018.
In the first study, published in The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine in 2015, he treated 50 reports of pain at a 76% success rate and 29 reports of non-pain problems at a 79% success rate. The study, conducted at NYU’s Lutheran Hospital, is also what caught the attention of Bunim/Murray and landed him a TV deal. The second is still underway.
I’ve written about so-called “energy healing” more times than I can remember on this blog. Energy healing is based on the mystical belief that there is some sort of “energy field” that self-described “energy healers” can manipulate. In the case of reiki, that “energy field” is not the patient’s, but rather what reiki masters call the “universal source,” a mystical energy field that they claim to be able to tap into to direct energy from it to patients for healing effect. That’s why I frequently refer to reiki as faith healing that substitutes an Eastern mystical beliefs (the universal source) for the Judeo-Christian god invoked by faith healers. Reiki can get really weird, too, such as claims of distance healing, healing through time to the past or future, and the ability to heal pets.
Other forms of energy healing include a modality known as “healing touch” or “therapeutic touch.” These are misnomers, because therapeutic touch doesn’t actually involve touching, although it does involve the claim that its practitioners can manipulate an “energy field” around human beings to therapeutic effect, all without touching them. Indeed, it goes beyond that. Its practitioners claim to be able to detect illnesses and stimulate recuperative powers through their healing intention. Sadly, therapeutic touch is a form of woo that has become quite entrenched in nursing schools and in the nursing profession. It’s also a form of quackery that’s so quacky that even a 12-year-old girl, Emily Rosa, could devise a test to demonstrate that it’s quackery and get it published in JAMA.
These are the “respectable” forms of energy healing, as quacky as they still are. Charlie Goldsmith doesn’t even reach that level. Indeed, I almost have to thank Tim Caulfield for reminding me of him. I had blogged about him before. At that time, I noted just how truly, truly bad the study being cited was. Seeing Porkoláb’s credulous take on it reminded me of the credulous take that put Goldsmith on my radar two years ago, written by someone named someone named Chip Brown. In any case, let’s look at the trial again briefly.
Basically, the study is described in the paper as a feasibility study and a prospective exploratory case series. Anyone involved in clinical research knows the translation of these terms: It was an unblinded, uncontrolled study, and indeed, that’s exactly what it was. Subjects were selected by the research team based on their “clinical judgment,” which translated means that they picked whomever they felt like picking with no defined inclusion criteria and only one exclusion criteria, namely the judgment that the patient might have some secondary gain.his is the best that the authors can do describing how they picked their subjects:
Using their clinical judgment, physicians identified as potential participants adult patients, employees, or friends or family of employees who had signs and symptoms that were not responding to traditional medical therapy or were only slowly responding. Patients deemed to have secondary gains for their medical condition or who were unable or unwilling to communicate with the research team regarding the effects of the energy medicine session were excluded from the study. Assessments by which improvement was typically gauged in this clinical setting were specified for each individual patient on the basis of the judgment of his or her treating physician.
Here’s a hint. Good clinical trials, even preliminary exploratory case series, define their inclusion and exclusion criteria in advance. They also define their primary endpoints (the specific symptoms or physiological parameters that they expect their intervention to affect) in advance. This study did nothing of the sort. There was no long term followup to assess whether the pain relief persisted. True, a ten-point pain scale was used to assess pain before and after Goldsmith’s ministrations, with relief characterized as none, slight, moderate, and marked based on the change in pain scale rating. Changes in non-pain complaints were also rated none, slight, moderate, and marked, with no real definition of what constitutes these levels of relief.
In other words, it was a study with cherry picked patients almost custom-designed to produce strong placebo effects, regression to the mean, and confirmation bias, typical of the sorts of studies published in a journal like the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine and other complementary and alternative medicine journals. That Porkoláb didn’t spot this right away about this study tells me either that she’s utterly clueless or that she so wanted to believe in Goldsmith that she overlooked the glaring methodological flaws of the trial.
This credulity leads her to burnish Goldsmith’s legend better than he himself can do it:
Prior to the studies done in the public eye, Goldsmith spent years healing as many as he could, often those who had been failed by countless doctors and traditional medicine. He has never once charged for his work—his day job includes working as Managing Director at Cassette, a creative communications agency he founded at 19, and Pumpy Jackson, a clean, sugar-free brand of chocolate he founded as well.
Goldsmith’s success rates are undeniably high, having relieved people of all ages, with issues ranging from chronic pain to infections and auto-immune disorders, often in 60 seconds or less.
Now there are claims that can be tested. Pain is subjective and therefore highly influenced by placebo effects and all the other confounders that affect the perception of pain, both by the patient and the practitioner. However, infections and autoimmune diseases are far less so. If Goldsmith can heal infections in 60 seconds flat, that’s a claim that can be tested with objective tests. Let’s say Goldsmith “cures” a pneumonia. It’s not hard to show that, before his treatment, the patient has pneumonia and afterwards he does not. Hell, even the resolution of urinary tract infection should be easily demonstrable. The same is true of auto-immune diseases. There are objective markers of autoimmune diseases that can be followed to show how active the disease is. If Goldsmith can truly cure autoimmune disorders in 60 seconds, it really shouldn’t be difficult to show in a randomized, controlled trial. Hell, it might not even take a randomized trial, but rather a longitudinal trial following patients with autoimmune disease before and after Goldsmith’s ministrations. Alteration in immune markers measured in the blood associated with the autoimmune disease should be obvious if Goldsmith’s claims are accurate.
Or not:
But he confessed to me that it’s not an exact art.
“To be honest, sometimes I’ll work on something that—medically—is seemingly simple and not fix it. And something that is medically complex—something medically incurable, for example—that might be quite easy for me,” he said.
Uh-huh. Then prove it. No more bullshit. Just prove it.
Quackademic medicine embarrasses itself even more than usual
If there’s one thing I’ve learned about quackademic medicine (the infiltraiton of quackery into academic medicine in the form of “integrative medicine), there’s no nonsense too nonsensical for it to take seriously. Consistent with that credulity, Goldsmith has his enablers among respectable academic physicians:
On Goldsmith’s site, Dr. Ramsey Joudeh, from NYU’s Lutheran Medical Center, attests to Goldsmith’s miraculous healing powers:
Most of our narcotics decrease a patient’s pain by three to five points. If you go from a 10, meaning the worst pain you can imagine, to five, that’s significant. In some cases Charlie reduced a patient’s pain from 10 to zero. He also treated people with infections where antibiotics were not effective. You could see the shift in a patient’s status from stagnant to a rapid healing resolution. I can’t quantify it, but I would say Charlie cuts off pateints’ hospital stays. Watching him work has been humbling in the most extreme way.
Oh, please. Dr. Joudeh is credulous in the extreme, so much so that he embarrasses the hell out of me as a fellow physician. Unfortunately, he is not atypical of a lot of academic physicians who have fallen under the spell of “integrative medicine” in that he seems to forget not just basic science that should be enough to tell him that what claims like those of Goldsmith are so incredibly improbable that incredible evidence would be needed to support them convincingly. Basically, Goldsmith’s claims are a lot like those of homeopathy. For his claims to be true, huge swaths of very well supported science would have to be not just wrong, but spectacularly wrong. Worse, Porkoláb is utterly oblivious to this simple principle:
Routinely touted as ‘alternative medicine,’ energy-based healing is, in fact, a centuries-old practice. Many traditional healing modalities are rooted in the belief of balance and harmony of life force energy—the energy that flows through all living things. Although the various schools of thought differentiate slightly, it is generally accepted that energetic imbalances and disturbances to energy flow, even subtle, are the cause of maladies. This can be seen in Traditional Chinese Medicine, where energy is referred to as “chi” and energy pathways as “meridians.” In Japanese medicine, known as Kampo, this energy is referred to as “ki.” And in ancient Indian medicine—Ayurveda—this life force is known as “prana” and travels on “nadis.”
You know what else all these “energies” have in commmon? They are not detectable by science. Nor are effects of any of these energy healing modalities detectable. Not that any of this stops Porkoláb from happily quoting advocates who invoke quantum mechanics to “explain” how energy healing “works.” Here’s a hint. You can easily substitute the term “quantum mechanics” for the word “magic,” and passages like this will mean exactly the same thing:
Curious as to how someone would explain energy healing to a non-believer, I reached out to acclaimed energy medicine practitioner and researcher Dr. Daniel J. Benor. The wholistic psychiatrist and author of Healing Research, Volume I replied,
Quantum physics demonstrates that matter and energy are two aspects of the same thing, and this is generally accepted as true for inanimate matter. There is no reason to suggest the same does not apply to living matter, such as a human body. Conventional medicine addresses the physical body, while healers and other bioenergy therapists address the bioenergy body.
“I’ve heard lots of theories about why these things are possible but I don’t like theories very much. I like things that I know—and what I know is, it works,” Goldsmith declared.
Let’s look at Benor’s claim first. Seriously, the best he can come up with is an analogy? Yes, energy and matter are interchangeable, but that’s for all matter. Does he think that living matter is different in this aspect? There’s nothing different about the molecules that make up me, for instance, and those that constitute inanimate matter like a rock when it comes to how much energy is contained. While it’s true that I don’t like to think of what would happen if all the atoms in my body were to be converted to energy (something that would be very detrimental to my ability to continue to lay down Insolence, Respectful or not-so-Respectful), I accept that matter is matter, and that matter is equivalent to energy according to Albert Einstein’s famous equation E=mc2.
As for the rest, the fact that animate matter is energy in the same way that inanimate matter is does not mean that energy healing works. Nor does it mean that there is such a thing as the “bioenergy body.” Again, some forms of “energy healing” are no more than faith healing gussied up with some Eastern mystical beliefs, while other forms of “energy healing” are simply utter nonsense.
Unfortunately, enablers such as Courtney Porkoláb are ready to defend quackery thusly in response to a doctor who questioned the existence of biofields of the type that Goldsmith claims to be able to tap into and use to heal people:
You're a medical doctor and do not believe human biofields exist? So you're saying ECGs and EEGs just measure "magic energy fields?" Got it.
— Courtney Porkoláb (@C_Porkolab) November 15, 2017
“Biofields.” You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. Seriously, though. Here’s the difference. We can measure the energy field associated with ECGs and EEGs. The measurements are reliable and reproducible. They guide clinical management. There is extensive scientific literature demonstrating their usefulness in diagnosis and management. In contrast, we can’t measure the “biofields” to which Porkoláb refers, much less correlate them so strongly with disease states. Sadly, Porkoláb doesn’t seem to understand.
Similarly, I don’t think that “validation” means what Mr. Goldsmith seems to think it means:
Fiercely determined, he insisted that he will continue to validate energy healing until medicine starts asking questions, such as: “Why is this happening? What is the difference between someone who can do this and someone who can’t? And how can we utilize this, whether it be replicating it somehow through technology or finding people who innately have these abilities?”
As I like to say, Mr. Goldsmith is putting the cart before the horse. Before you can ask questions like, “Why is this happening?” we have to know that “this” is actually happening, something that Goldsmith thus far has utterly failed to demonstrate. Harriet Hall coined a term for this sort of research: Tooth fairy science, which is studying the minutiae of a claimed phenomenon without actually having demonstrated that the phenomenon exists in the first place.
This is the best evidence you’ve got?
So what evidence does Charlie Goldsmith have other than the crappy study he and Ms. Porkoláb like to cite, a study that shows absolutely nothing? Well, he’s got lots and lots of testimonials, some of those giving the testimonials claiming that Goldsmith healed them over the phone. Several of these testimonials read like comments that my spam filter rejects by the dozen claiming that this or that healer healed someone or that medical marijuana is the greatest thing ever. Some of them don’t demonstrate anything that could remotely be called energy healing but simply suggest that Goldsmith might function as an empathetic therapist. Here’s an example:
When I first asked Charlie for help I had blocked my rape out for 7 years the best way I knew how, silence. Everyday I suffered the consequences of this. Everyday I hummed with resentment; anger and hate that an individual could make me feel so insignificant and inadequate. Nearly every night I would have horrific nightmares that made me dread sleep. No one could touch my wrists, my hips or my neck. I held a lot of anger, and found it extremely difficult to mirror the emotions of those around me. I found it almost impossible to love the way I now know is properly and looking back on it now, I would refer to myself as quite ‘cold hearted’. Charlie allowed me to explain the event for the first time with zero judgement. I held a lot of self-blame, a lot of ‘if I had done this differently’. He helped me realise that nothing was my fault. That I had reacted in the best way I knew how. Over a few weeks he showed me how to feel. Something that may seem so simple to most, but for me it wasn’t. He taught me and allowed me to continue through the stages until I reached acceptance. Holding my hand, so to speak, the whole way, offering nothing but kindness and support. Today, I have no nightmares and sleep better than I have in years. I am touchable and hold hardly any anger. Opening up to Charlie was the best thing I have ever done. He saved me from a life of constant pain, and potentially self-destruction.
There is another very similar testimonial there as well. This is nothing that an empathetic friend or a decent therapist couldn’t have accomplished, no need to invoke mystical mumbo-jumbo energy fields.
Goldsmith states that he’s in the midst of a second study:
The clinical practices of Charlie Goldsmith are currently under investigation in a study being conducted jointly by Monash University Professor Paul Komesaroff and New York University. Mr Goldsmith’s intention is to expose his work to multiple scientific studies, which will ultimately include a double blind controlled trial that directly tests outcomes. The study presently underway is being undertaken at NYU Lutheran Hospital in New York and employs a qualitative methodology to help understand the experiences of patients who encounter Mr Goldsmith’s practices. The results from this study will be used, as appropriate, to assist with the development of further qualitative and quantitative studies.
I like the claim that these studies will “ultimately included a double-blind controlled trial that tests outcomes.” That’s nice. Why not do that study now? Because the study described above is no better than the crappy study from 2015 that Porkoláb touts. In any case, I decided to search ClinicalTrials.gov for this study. First off, I found nothing searching on Komesaroff’s name. So I started searching on the names of the investigators of the previous study. So either the study wasn’t registered on ClinicalTrials.gov, which is always a red flag for me, or Goldsmith isn’t working with the same investigators as last time. It wouldn’t matter, though, if it were registered. There are lots of highly dubious studies on ClinicalTrials.gov.
Meanwhile, on Twitter, Porkoláb is falling back on the lamest of the lame defenses, the “don’t blame me, I’m just sparking discussion” defense:
Agree this is a controversial topic. My opinions are my own, not @Forbes. @charlegoldsmith, per article, said he cannot scientifically explain.
— Courtney Porkoláb (@C_Porkolab) November 14, 2017
And:
This show was bound to undoubtedly spark conversation. I am not confirming it works or how it does. Studies were referenced to gage @charlegoldsmith’s opinion.
— Courtney Porkoláb (@C_Porkolab) November 14, 2017
Meanwhile,. Goldsmith showed up as well:
Actually I do not charge anyone. If you're going to be a skeptic at least do proper research. Otherwise you're being just like a religious person and talking about what you believe, which isn't very sciency.
— Charlie Goldsmith (@charlegoldsmith) November 15, 2017
So what if he doesn’t charge anyone? May I assume he’s doing his TV show for free? Also, quacks do what quacks do for reasons other than money sometimes. For instance, there’s ego gratification and, in fairness, the good feeling that anyone who takes care of other people gets when doing good. Goldsmith thinks he’s doing good; so he could easily be motivated largely by that. As for the “religious person” charge, well, that just sounds like projection. Goldsmith is also very, very unhappy that a bud of mine, Clay Jones, called him a fraud:
Actually Clay, by definition I am not a fraud because I believe i am helping people, they believe I am helping them AND i do not charge. You need to get your self a dictionary.
— Charlie Goldsmith (@charlegoldsmith) November 15, 2017
OK, I’ll accept that Goldsmith might not necessarily a fraud, but he’s definitely deluded as hell. He also doesn’t understand basic principles of science, like the burden of proof:
The onus in that argument would be for you to prove that i am a fraud and i'm not sure what evidence you'd be able to present about me..
— Charlie Goldsmith (@charlegoldsmith) November 15, 2017
Um, no, Mr. Goldsmith. You and your followers claim, an extraordinary ability. The burden of evidence to prove that you can do what you claim is on you, not on Clay to prove that you’re a fraud.
So basically, what we have is a new quack, a new “energy healing” charlatan, plus some integrative medicine practitioners so “open minded” that their brains fell out long ago doing useless studies to test his “abilities,” studies that won’t confirm or refute whether he has these abilities in the first place. The quack goes along with them because they feed his ego and serve as good advertising. Meanwhile, a cable network, TLC, produces a completely credulous show featuring the quack in order to make money off of him, much as the E! Network did the same with the psychic medium fraud Tyler Henry.
I’ll make a prediction: Goldsmith’s show will likely be as successful as Henry’s show, given that it was clearly TLC’s answer to it. I’ll make a further prediction. There’ll be several “preliminary” and unblinded studies that claim to show Goldsmith’s miraculous healing abilities even when they don’t, and that double-blinded study will never materialize. I’ll even make a further suggestion. In the design of the trial, Mr. Goldsmith should consult Emily Rosa. She’s all grown up now, and could definitely do a better job designing a trial than the twits designing the current trials. If Ms. Rosa isn’t available, Steve Novella and I would be happy to step in.
199 replies on “Charlie Goldsmith: A new celebrity quack arises, enabled by TLC”
Charlie doesn’t miss a beat. “Prove me wrong!” “Your science is just like religion! Har har har!”
Of course he’s doing the TV show for free. There will be no profit from any books or ancillary products either.
According to you and the Orac, the Skeptical Raptor comic book figure/pseudo scientist, nobody is supposed to do anything for anyone without your express approval. Charlie has something to offer. You practice evil. No wonder there is so much suffering in the world. Elon Musk would defecate on both of you and walk away.
Orac is an actual practicing doctor who treats patients and does science. He also calls out fake science. That’s actually helping people. Mr. Goldsmith sells a false cure. I actually expect he does help some people, people for whom the placebo effect makes a difference, or who need emotional support. But he is still selling and promoting a fake treatment, and the risk is that people who need actual medicine will not get it because of it.
Well, that would be par for the course. Is your favored oligarch going to award a “Breakthrough Prize” (✱koff✱) to ol’ Charlie anytime soon, Mr. Sucks?
Since there is no reply button for Dorit Rubinstein Reiss, I’m responding here.
I work in the medical field. There are arrogant physicians, those who won’t budge an inch on anything that doesn’t fall within their paradigm. Perhaps this skeptical surgeon is one of them. Given all I’ve witnessed, I don’t automatically hop on board with an opinion simply because the person opining has an M.D. after their name.
There is no risk to these people of not getting “actual medicine” because these people have already exhausted all possibilities with conventional medicine.
To Chris: That person isn’t speaking of the one they are healing, but of themselves. If a healer overdoes it, it impacts themselves physically in a detrimental way.
Whether energy is kinetic energy (in motion) or potential energy, it’s energy & it exists everywhere. The chair you sit on is composed of atoms containing sub-atomic particles that vibrate. So even though the chair appears solid & static, on a subatomic level, it isn’t. Energy is a part of that. Like I said, it’s everywhere.
I know energy healing works-I heal people with energy and can prove it-do too many healings=sapping of personal energy&nausea, vomiting ect.
So tell us about this “energy” by telling us the difference between kinetic energy and potential energy, and how are they related.
“… do too many healings=sapping of personal energy&nausea, vomiting ect.”
That does not sound healthy. It mostly sounds like the person is getting sicker!
Wait, so energy healing actually saps your energy? I think I saw something like that on Star Trek, but I thought one was supposed to just be a channel for Universal Energy or something in the Earth sense.
Anyway, you might want to get those symptoms checked out by an actual doctor.
When I think of energy healing, I’m always reminded of the alien healing machine featured on “Babylon 5” that played a major role in two pivotal parfs of the plot. http://babylon5.wikia.com/wiki/Energy_Transfer_Device
I suspect that Mr. Bates has just asserted that Energy Healing may not be compatible with General Relativity. This would fall into “I’ll take starts witha Q for 400” territory were it not for the essential hydraulics.
I wasn’t clear about who was sick-I resolved a urinary tract infection two days after treating pneumonia-I am a retired registered nurse and know what infected lungs sound like. My wife and I both used a stethoscope before and after tx. Clear breath sounds in all 3 lobes after tx-crackels and wet before. I think I pushed it to far and I was the one with nausea vomiting and diarrhea 16 hours after treating UTI. It was like my body shut down and didn’t want to digest food so It all was purged-really sucked for me. This all happened after Thanksgiving 2017. I treated two elbows and a arthritis problem associated with the back, these problems were resolved on Thanksgiving day, so too much too soon me realize there are limits to what can be done. Charlie Goldsmith verified some things for me. But my visualizing is diff. I see light entering the body from who knows where, but it works. I’ve been doing this for about 6 yrs, 1st was a infected deep lacerated finger, expressed pus, debrided wound.bandaged, antibiotic ointment, I then directed light to wound-I was told yrs later that it felt like finger was on fire. Four days later I checked-healed with a narrow scar that looked to be yrs old. Impossible, perhaps for you not for me.
Why should we believe you? How was it independently verified? Did you submit case reports to a journal?
Also, what is the difference between kinetic energy and potential energy, and how are they related to each other?
Strange that everyone else uses silly tests such as X-rays and blood work to diagnose pneumonia.
OK, so you’re some sort of really inefficient fiber-optic cable? The nonconservative-force bit is rather perplexing.
To Narad: Blood tests don’t diagnose pneumonia. I know because a.) I work in the medical field & b.) I’ve had pneumonia.
I am Easter Bunny. A rabbit that lays eggs, chocolate ones at that. Prove otherwise?
Ah So..you have doubts as is your position from where you are at within yourself? Then you must actually walk a little further along the path my friend…it will take you to places you will be amazed to see. Live, love and stay open to all that is. All that isn’t is holding you back. Experience things for yourself with an open heart (mind) and allow greater knowledge to gradually educate and change you. Or, stay where you are it is safe…or at least it seems that way. This world according to most scientists now is more likely than not to be a computer generated reality based on fractals and equations that we are only now beginning to understand. Try some Greg Braden lectures and watch some movies from Gaia you will be entertained and educated and opened to many other aspects of your existence that you are unaware of now. Don’t look back!
I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Music videos on MTV. Stories of people and events from long ago on the History channel. I’ve watched The Learning Channel, and seen the wonders of the universe explained, and been inspired. All that programming, lost like tears in the rain. Time to kill my TV.
Oooh. Nice. I see what you did there.
I think you’re batty.
In addition to the 3 R’s (Reading, Writing and Arithmetic for you young’uns), we need to add critical thinking to the list of mandatory courses to be taken over an academic lifetime. The sheer stupidity of these beliefs beggar the imagination. I’d like to think that if critical thinking was more widely promoted, the more blatantly foolish modalities would disappear. To steal and adjust a phrase from our revered leader.. “It’s 2017, time to put aside childish things and be grown-ups”
I’m not sure that’s such a great idea. Anything they make you learn in school is tarnished by the setting. I am told that “Silas Marner”, “A Separate Peace”, and “Ethan Frome” are great works of literature, but I will never know, having had the juice sucked out of them by the educators to whose care I was entrusted. Critical thinking would become as popular as trigonometry, meaning only those predisposed to enjoying it will enjoy it and the rest will be surreptitiously checking their phones.
What we need to do is to explicitly forbid adolescents from learning it for fear of stunting their growth, acting as a gateway drug, or causing them to grow hair in strange places.
It’s very ironic that TLC means The Learning Channel. From Wikipedia, “The channel was founded in 1972 by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare and NASA as the Appalachian Community Service Network, and was an informative and instructional network focused on providing real education through the medium of television; it was distributed at no cost by NASA satellite.” What a long fall from science education to pseudo-science misinformation.
Fun thing about the Emily Rosa single blind therapeutic touch experiment is if you actually do the stats it has a negative p value >.05 greater than random. One can speculate why this happened but participants reported wierd feelings afterwards.
That makes no sense as written. If you mean that the p-value was larger than 5%, so (in the traditional hypothesis testing sense) there was no evidence of any effects from the “therapeutic touch” claptrap, then that would be the usual interpretation. “Negative p-value” typically isn’t used as a term though, and I’m at a loss to see what you mean by “greater than random”.
Just out of curiosity, how do you test a one person alleged magic cure in a controlled, double blind placebo trial? How is that possible?
Double blind in this case probably meant the subject was wearing 2 pirate eye patches and a blindfold.
Ha ha! Perfect. Scientifically sound, as well. Amidst the entire debacle of what this “RCT” would constitute (if even attempted), the ridiculous number and types of potential biases out there make this almost impossible to run. I would love to see them attempt it, though, just for fun.
“Pumpy Jackson, a clean, sugar-free brand of chocolate”
First of all, nice to see you around in post-SB format.
Now: “Clean”? OK, “sugar-free,” while y’know, bleh, is at least a meaningful descriptor. But what, other chocolate is supposed to be “dirty”?
It’s little stuff like this that lets you know who you’re dealing with.
It used Monk Fruit extract, which is exactly as clean as sugar beet extract I guess.
Woo meisters use terms like ‘clean’ to describe organic GMO free foods. Supposedly there are no toxic chemicals ( pesticides, additives, other dreck) to contaminate Nature’s purity. I guess dirty chocolate would be the standard type.
It appears the force is strong in the young padawan-Jedi Charlie Goldsmith, although the power of suggestion seems to be his claim to fame.
The power of suggestion is great and can affect any intelligent creature.
For example, Orac writes,
“Albert Einstein’s famous equation E=mc2.”
In an article from American Scientific (2015) titled, Was Einstein the First to Invent E = mc2?, the author writes, “E = mc2 is the short punch line to a long and winding scientific story.”
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/was-einstein-the-first-to-invent-e-mc2/
I want to believe that the lovable Albert Einstein is the sole creator of E=mc2, therefore, Orac’s words are powerful and have great meaning for me.
In truth :-), the power of suggestion (i.e., placebo effect) will continue to be a long and winding “scientific story” based on the overwhelming power of empathy.
What in Servalan’s nasty knickers does any of this have to do with the power of suggestion?
I don’t think you’ve watched the show. Charlie doesn’t make any suggestions.
Unfortunately, I know a great deal about energy healing owing to my adventures around the woo-esphere;
I almost think that woo requires an aspect of this nonsense ranging from prayer and *spirituality* to having actual machines *a la* Rife ( right now there’s a doctor in the Bay Area perfecting his method with the assistance of a former NASA engineer). TMR often discusses this.
It’s all about the frequency, man!
One of the idiots I survey claims to be an energy healer, capable of attuning the frequencies of seekers who come to him: it’s a gift, you see.. His mother was a prayerful healer in WV and he inherited the power. .Participants in his retreats are given a vegan diet, supplements, exercise and enlightening lectures over a week or two to prime their vibes and then experience the laying on of hands which many claim
cures serious illness. HOWEVER this is never explicitly stated anywhere in writing anywhere that I can discern: it’s talked about in radio / internet shows and probably in live lectures as well. He features testimonials where subjects speak of how they felt a surge of power when he touched them. And then, a cure.
I could go on but won’t.
Basically, altie world is rife with stuff like thus so why not a semi-attractive charlatan from Oz?
OK, I have nowhere else to put this. I’ve been helping my dad clean out the garage and so forth, which included a lot of artificial Christmas trees of all sizes. (My mom really went over the top.) There was one item, however, which looked like base for one, but there weren’t any left.
It proved to be a base for a patio umbrella once I had the sense to find the manufacturer from the UPC code, but I first tried searching on the model number (EB-9) in different ways and stumbled across this:
Sterling Silver Earring Base for Breast Milk Jewelry Vial
A few years back I went to a woman who does healing touch. It is different than what Charlie Goldsmith does, but it is a form of alternative healing. A co-worker gave me this woman’s contact information. I went into my first session with some skepticism. You never know who is legitimate and who isn’t. Before she even started the healing touch aspect, she blew my mind by pinpointing various physical issues I had. I had told her nothing prior to seeing her. My co-worker knew nothing about these particular issues. How could she know what issues I had simply by being present with me? I believe she has a gift.
Yes there are people out there who are charlatans. But not everyone is.
Could we start at the massive total of Americans killed every year by prescription drugs…these are those murdered by Charlatans. Doctors doing their master’s any cemetery and count the headstones…every one of them (just about) was a patient of a doctor once. The greater percentage of energy healing works… the agenda of the Pharma companies is to keep everyone foolish enough to believe their Doctor i a state of UNWELLNESS. Insiders tell us this truth all the time. what is is. In excess of three Pharma Co lobbyists for every USA congressman and they take 70 to 80% of their diary time.. Oh that’s right…everything except Pharma Co murder is fake news. What about Pharma Co profits? Are they fake news? Most energy healing works…most drugs work some energy healing doesn’t work, some drugs don’t work.By the way Goldsmith is the real deal…
“It’s the electrician. I’ve come to fix your toilet.”
MJD: Would you please stop pretending you know or care about science? For as long as I’ve been on this board, you’ve been making up your own facts and pretending they have scientific support, and demonstrating in the process that your education stopped somewhere around 7th grade. Stop using science as a buzzword and go learn some.
@ politicalguineapig85 writes,
For as long as I’ve been on this board…
MJD says,
Really?
The “board” just launched this month (i.e., respecfulinsolence.com), jeez.
mjd, you’ve been lying about science and your knowledge for a long time. That’s the point.
Well done. It’s clear you have no better answer.
politicalguineapig85 writes,
…your education stopped somewhere around 7th grade.
MJD says,
The inevitability of writing at greater than a 7th grade level:
When Orac’s minions have a hard time comprehending my comments it’s likely they won’t read them and respond.
@ politicaslguinepig85, dean, and rw23,
Thanks for your response!
@MJD: **
Listen, seriously:
There’s a reason why Orac and his minions respond to you as they do. Do you know why that is?
Any vague suspicion or inkling?
You aren’t arguing at the same level as most of them. I know you have a degree but some of your material doesn’t sound as if you studied science at all. I’m not saying this to insult you. You don’t use data and research to argue your points. You don’t present ideas that warrant further research. You don’t rely upon meaningful sources..
Actually you could learn a lot from some of the commenters here who are doctors, legal experts, physicists, nurses, engineers, epis etc.
Most any one of them would be glad to refer you to appropriate readings. Orac himself links up to studies. In addition, there are opportunities for adults to continue their educations at colleges and universities. Many people do this to either increase their understanding or to get better jobs. What have you got to lose?
* I know I really shouldn’t BUT….
Denice Walter writes,
There’s a reason why Orac and his minions respond to you as they do. Do you know why that is?
MJD says,
I don’t know why, Denice.
Could you please enlighten me?
“When Orac’s minions have a hard time comprehending my comments it’s likely they won’t read them and respond.”
“The fools! They can’t understand my advanced ideas so they call me a madman! But I’ll show them all! Soon they will bow down before my genius!”
MJD, leave that kind of thing to John Carradine and Vincent Price. They did it so much better.
politicalguineapig85 writes,
Stop using science as a buzzword and go learn some.
MJD says,
BTW – In the book I’ve completed for Cambridge Scholars Publishing titled, Patents and Artificial Intelligence – Thinking Computers, my research showed that there were 426 male inventors and 17 female inventors in the US patents that have the phrase “artificial intelligence” in the title.
Therefore, ninety-six percent (96%) of the inventors in such patents were male.
Q. Is this discovery considered adding something to science.
“Therefore, ninety-six percent (96%) of the inventors in such patents were male.”
That might mean something, but it’s a sure bet it doesn’t mean what you think it does — and it certainly doesn’t mean you have anything worthwhile to say about science or artificial intelligence. From your comments my undergrad students in machine learning would run rings around you.
No surprise though — your unsupportable inflated view of yourself has been demonstrated repeatedly. You do it every time you comment about vaccine risks, since you’re always wrong.
dean writes,
From your comments my undergrad students in machine learning would run rings around you.
MJD says,
That’s awesome, dean.
Glad to hear that your students are flourishing under your tutelage.
Michael J. Dochniak (MJD) thinks too much. Of himself and not enough about actual science. 🙂
People like Dr. Benor are so wedded to the alleged magic of quantum physics that they ascribe powers to it that it does not have. Mass-energy equivalence comes out of special relativity, not quantum mechanics, which was not developed as a theory for about two decades after Einstein wrote his famous equation.
Ms. Porkolab, as well as several of the alleged doctors she mentions, failed an intelligence test. Energy healing, like homeopathy, is something that any reasonably intelligent layman should be able to figure out is bunk. There is no plausible causal mechanism other than the placebo effect.
All this stuff about chi and meridians and life force is just a low-level approximation to modern science.
Live bodies are full of kinetic energy. Dead bodies aren’t. That’s the energy our pre-enlightenment ancestors meant.
The bodies is full of transmission “lines” like nerves and arteries. Nerves transmit electrical energy. Arteries transmit chemicals that energize your cells.
What’s exceptionally weird is that the alt-med crowd uses much more refined versions of the same theory to dumb EEGs and ECGs down to Reiki.
I don’t think that word (kinetic energy) means what you think it means.
Dead bodies may not move of their own volition, but they can be moved, and they have kinetic energy while they are moving. The catapult you use to launch a body over the city wall[1] doesn’t care whether the body is alive or dead. That body has a certain mass and is launched with a certain velocity, therefore it has a non-zero kinetic energy.
[1]Not a hypothetical example: this is alleged to have happened during the siege of Caffa in 1346, resulting in the spread of Yersina pestis to Europe.
Yeah, but your catapult required external energy to get it to move. A live person can find potatoes and generate her own kinetic energy.
Wow, you can grow potatoes without any input of external energy? Wonders never cease.
Christine Rose:
Careful there, heat is a form of kinetic energy. Unless that dead body is sitting at close to absolute zero temperature, which it pretty likely isn’t in most places in the world where dead bodies are found, it’s still got quite a lot of kinetic energy in it. The energetic difference between living bodies and dead bodies is not as big as you might imagine… otherwise, dead bodies wouldn’t possess sufficient chemical potential energy to burn in fire. But hey, there’s got to be some reason ravens and raccoons eat dead bodies, right;-)
Nerves are driven by chemical potential energy, not electrical energy in the sense of electricity. It’s all partitioned ion gradients (sodium and potassium IIRC) where the charge currents detected by EEG and ECG only ever travel a distance of ~6 nm across cellular membranes as a given membrane depolarizes by letting ions flow through it –the electrical fields here are a side effect of the gradient, rather than the point of the gradient. And these currents are not of electrons. The resting 70 mV potential across a nerve membrane is due entirely to the difference in ion content on either side. The wave propagating along a nerve to send the signal are in measures of membrane polarization, which is not current at all and not really actually “transmitting energy”… the ion currents don’t even travel in the same direction as the actual signal, which is a triggered depolarization wave. You might be baffled to know that nerves are actually using energy in order to attain their resting state, not to fire! How do we know any of this? Not by alternative medicine, that’s for sure.
One might wonder whether Ms. Porkoláb thinks the magic healing biofield has a scalar or a vector potential associated with it. Then again, I suppose Bensgston has demonstrated some form of the Aharanov-Bohm effect.
Charlie’s website mostly deals with alleged healing activities, but also promotes his brand of chocolate* and his “creative communications agency”. If his motives are pure, he shouldn’t be using the notoriety of his health escapades to sell products and services.
*According to the company website, this ultra-chocolate sells for about $5.50 an ounce, while the comparable-sounding Hershey’s Special Dark chocolate goes for 41 cents an ounce. Then again, Hershey’s is not chock full o’ woo, vegan and non-GMO goodness. And I bet Hershey’s energy fields are way inferior too.
Sounds a bit like a video spiel I heard for somebody’s turmeric/curcumin supplements. Only $50 a bottle but theirs were much more effective because they had an extra ingredient and were totally pesticide free, which may be why they sometimes ran out!
So you’d better take advantage of the special offer for 6 bottles for only $250 !!!
I knew it was nonsense in the first three paras when the author referred to “NYU’s Lutheran Hospital” – I went to NYU and unless someone high up had a sudden conversion of the soul, the hospital is called Langone, not Lutheran. What a weird and random thing to make up.
In fairness, that’s a recent development.
From experience energy healing works, just not in the way they think it does. My prostate cancer was cured using energy beams (x-ray length radiation I believe) to blast the cancer cells.
That must be some pretty hefty ego gratification: the guy gets to sit around in a lab being studied. I can imagine the warm, fuzzy feeling that goes with being the phenomenon. Gotta wonder how far along Charlie Goldsmith is with his messiah complex.
Well, technically E = mc^2 is an outcome of electromagnetism, not quantum mechanics;-) All you need to prove it is light pressure from E&M, center of mass from Newtonian mechanics and corpuscles of massless light, which I guess could be taken from photoelectric effect as photons, but could as easily be a finite light pulse. The light-in-a-box thought experiment is pretty cool! Moreover, quantum mechanics doesn’t really need mass-energy equivalence until you start talking about relativistic theories; Schrodinger equation uses classical energy notions. Mass-energy equivalence is not very needed until you’re talking about conditions that are pretty extreme, high gravity (sitting at the event horizon of a Black hole) or very large speed (traveling a substantial portion of light speed). Most of quantum mechanics resides soundly in a place where relativistic energy expressions are only a tiny correction.
This is one thing that always bothers me about quacks; they never take the time to figure out what quantum mechanics actually says.
There’s a subtle difference between a derivation and a proof.
Actually light pressure is measurable and center of mass is measurable; mass-energy equivalence follows by induction –if both these things are true, this must also be true in order for everything to be consistent. It’s an inductive proof. And, I reiterate, quantum is not needed for that.
Well, I already pointed that out, but I need to hit the arXiv for something in the back of my head, and that’s going to have to wait until tonight.
I apologize to you Narad. My accusation of Dunning-Kruger below was unfair and insulting. I didn’t like the Ohanian comment and I bristled at that… I’m about to defend my PhD in physics and I’ve worked hard to build my skill at it. I hope we will have good conversations in the future!
I’ve added the derivation of E=pc from the stress-energy equation. I’m pretty well convinced that no Relativity or quantum is needed. Take it how you will.
Thanks for that. We’ll keep it at your place going forward, OK? (I have to get ready to travel again tomorrow morning, though.)
No problem. Have a safe trip!
For any future readers, I would recommend Ohanian, but be careful of Ohanian.
Whatever’s tickling my medulla oblongata, it’s not Ohanian. Neither am I convinced, however, that mass-energy equivalence can be satisfactorily derived without special relativity.
Sorry friend, but you’re punching over your weight on this one…
https://poetryinphysics.wordpress.com/2017/11/16/emc2/
Since you’re bringing medical terminology to a math fight, I can only assume your surgeon is showing;-)
The lavatory derivation assumes that c is invariant.
Oh boy, talk about kicking the tar baby.
You said this:
after you said this:
Do you know anything at all about physics? Special Relativity is based on the assumption that the speed of light is constant in all frames of reference. You can’t claim mass-energy equivalence depends on special relativity and then go bleating about the assumption of the invariance of the speed of light invalidating a derivation –Einstein’s work there, actually, not mine! Contradicting yourself, directly I might add, shows you’re in over your head. Good thing Dunning-Kruger isn’t lethal.
If you feel like continuing to dig your hole, be my guest.
For anybody interested in a more comprehensive version of the Einstein’s Box derivation, look here.
http://www.newenglandphysics.org/physics_world/sr/einsteins_box.htm
Oh and before you go pretending like another trolling comment gets you off the hook, here’s special rel. Note the fundamental assumptions right on the top of the page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_relativity
Do you know how to read? You attempted to refute the notion that SR was needed to obtain mass-energy equivalence.
What branch of physics are you in, anyway? I know what Eric does, I know what palindrom does, I know what Michael Finfer from SWaB does. You? I’m getting a certain Fendlesworth vibe here.
^ Oh, and I left the late lamented HDB off that list.
Given that 1kg of matter converts to roughly a 20 megaton explosion worth of energy, converting the atoms in your body to energy would also be detrimental to the ability of anybody within a fairly large radius to be able to read the insolence in any case.
In Other News:
The convictions of David and Collet Stephan in the death of their son Ezekiel (quack remedies instead of antibiotics) have been upheld by the Alberta Court of Appeal. As I suspected, there was a dissenting opinion.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/david-collet-stephan-meningitis-death-son-failure-provide-necessaries-appeal-1.4402665
[ test of hyperlink for above ]
The ruling is not yet up, but is likely to be in a day or two at
https://www.canlii.org/en/ab/abca/
I think it almost certain that Justice O’Ferrall dissented, based on failure, in his opinion, of the trial judge, when instructing the jury, to properly address the matter of what “a reasonable person” would do in the Stephans’ situation. He hammered this fairly hard at the appeal hearing, though the other two judges showed no signs of concern, at least in questions to the lawyers or comments. Earlier in the hearing he made remarks about how hearing “meningitis” would send most people scurrying to a doctor.
The Crown presumably will now proceed with its appeal, asking for stiffer sentences.
I want to see this Goldsmith fraud try to heal an ailing electric eel.
I already know whose “biofields” are going to win that showdown.
The next paragraph is even better:
I omitted the second link in order to include this interview with Rubik.
“She is a member of the advisory board of the Journal of Subtle Energies and the European Journal of Classical Homeopathy.”
But wait, Juggalos:
“REDWOOD: Do you have an opinion on the therapeutic use of magnets?
“RUBIK: I do. I’ve seen some studies and I’m impressed that the anecdotal reports I’ve heard all over the place are bearing true in clinical trials in terms of pain relief and reduction of inflammation. I once sprained an ankle and used some magnets obtained from an Oriental health shop in San Francisco. I had some amazing results with the swelling going down quickly and the pain disappearing. It’s hard to say how the magnets work on the body. From physics, there’s the Hall Effect, whereby if you have charged particles in a stream moving near a magnet, they will be altered in their flow because of the magnetic field. This might explain changes in the flow of blood and lymph, which contain a lot of charged proteins, ions, etc., and that may explain why swelling, pain, and inflammation are reduced.”
The Hall Effect is a real thing, but it does not do what Dr. Rubik alleges it does. Blood is (usually) constrained to move through vessels, which are fixed pathways. That limits the ability of charged particles to move perpendicularly to the magnetic field, even if you put the magnet in the right orientation (assuming arguendo that there is a right orientation, which is probably not the case given that this is woo).
Magnets have been a staple of woo for quite some time. Robert Park’s What’s New archives appear to have gone offline, but I still have the following item from his 25 August 2000 newsletter, which mentions somebody who will be familiar to most RI readers:
Of course, Park always included the following disclaimer at the bottom of his newsletters:
I know that. Hell, I’m surprised she didn’t toss in the quantum version for good measure. Anyway, one might observe that if the putative carriers of the current in this case (“blood and lymph, which contain a lot of charged proteins, ions, etc.”) responded that strongly to a magnetic field, all hell would have broken loose by now with those pesky MRI thingamabobs.
“Gary Null’s unisex magnetic underwear. It “penetrates the prostate, colon, ovaries, uterus and reproductive organs.””
If your underwear is penetrating your colon it’s not magnetism – it’s one bitch of a wedgie.
Besides no one is going to penetrate my colon without paying for dinner, drinks, and the hotel room first.
If Orac were completely converted entirely into energy according to E=mc^2, assuming him to be around 88 kg (average in the USA), that would involve the release of 7.9 exajoules, nearly 1.9 gigatons of TNT equivalent. Not only would he cease laying down Insolence, Respectful or not-so-Respectful, if he were in Detroit, the resulting explosion would devastate much of Michigan even out to Columbus, Cleveland, Grand Rapids, and nearly out to Toronto.
http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/classic/?lat=42.331427&lng=-83.0457538&zm=6&kt=1888000
Eric Lund: That reminds me of a few years ago when some companies started selling magnetic nail polish. (It had iron filings that you could move to make a design.) I always wondered what that’d do to my bus card and credit card.
MJD: Oh please. In seventh grade I was writing better than you could ever hope to. When your comments are met with initial silence, that’s because they are so full of bafflegab and nonsense that it’s difficult for people who dwell in the real world to understand them. Not to mention that most of your sentences are poorly constructed. You really should take a writing course along with those courses DW suggested. Or you could just try reading the sources once in a while, though that still won’t improve your writing. BTW, for the dim, I was referring to both this blog and the scienceblogs platform.
[…] has given a forum to a quack healer who claims he can cure infections and chronic diseases through energy […]
@Narad “The late lamented HDB”, oh no! What happened? I noticed that I hadn’t seen any recent posts.
HDB is fine. He is merely Smut Clyde now.
I did that for a reason.
Which doesn’t matter, given that “foolish physicist” is having a real snit.
Thank goodness. Thanks JP
If it takes this much venting to disprove a concept, I question the opinion. Anything easily discounted can be settled in a well-written paragraph. Reality is also subjective. For those who believe that there is more to life than the script we’ve been taught since childhood, there is much to learn.
Orac, I apologize in advance for not indulging in any negative banter. I only wonder if you could stop and reflect on way this Charlie Goldsmith has affected you so deeply. I don’t really understand how his life could cause you to lash out. It seems as though you two have never met and his success does not come at a cost to you. I hope you value peace, accountability, productivity and kindness in your line of work. If Mr. Goldsmith is being told by people that he is helping them, than who are we to argue with either him or his “patients”? If he feels fulfilled in his line of work, how is that different than anyone else with a career? For example, I haven’t ever met a physician that doesn’t suffer from a bit of a God complex. If it’s is real to them, or if it is all a giant hoax, why does it consume any of your time? What is your end game? I know you have people in your life that love and value you. Just keep in mind that we all do. We should not find gratification in sitting behind a desk trying to devalue other human beings.
I, of course, do not speak for our host, but only for myself.
I feel our host does a fine service by letting the world know that Goldsmith is a quack, and, more importantly, explaining the reasons to label Goldsmith as a quack.
In the words of the great philosopher Minchin, to the lady Storm (bolding mine)-
Wouldn’t you agree that giving people the information they can use to accurately identify the lies of a con man, or the ravings of a lunatic, a noble service? Should lies go unchallenged? Should the truth not be spread far and wide?
Whatever Goldsmith does for those he claims to heal (why do you put “patients” in quotes?), he is not correcting any medical problems, and to believe that he is, is to admit that you have fallen for a con, or are under the sway of a delusional mind, much as the followers of the late Charles Manson.
My only point is to take care to respect other people, even if we don’t agree. It is far to easy to be unkind to someone you do not know when you are sitting behind a computer screen. In most cases Dr. Gorski is doing a service with his blogs, to warn people to be wary. I feel, in this instance, the blog would have done well to warn people of the lack of evidence in favor of any spiritual healing or energy healing. I feel an educated physician should remind their patients or even the public to not forego science based medical practice in search some miracle worker. If Charlie Goldsmith were a pill being offered to the general public, than warn of him directly. He is one person and not accessible to the masses. We can all believe in what we choose, I’d rather just see the blog be less of a personal attack and more of a caution about the practice. This is a man on TV, just like hundreds of other people on TV. If Orac produced a blog designed to contest the validity of TV personalities, I’d probably have never seen it, but I certainly wouldn’t respond to it. I appreciate this site for the medical content, I just feel this post seemed more personal than medical and I’d hate to see this site take that direction. I am not arguing about beliefs or facts. I just believe in kindness and respect.
He has a freakin’ TV show on (what used to be) a top tier cable network, how is that not accessible to the masses?
You are correct that we can believe in what we choose, but that doesn’t make everyones beliefs true. Nobody with a lick of sense believes that energy medicine is real.
I’m starting to believe you are associated with Goldsmith. I believe you stand to profit from the show. Is that true?
You see our host’s post as a personal attack on Goldsmith. I see our host explaining why the evidence offered by Goldsmith and associates is lacking.
Please don’t take it so personally, my comment was to Dr. Gorski. I am not affiliated with TLC or Charlie Goldsmith. I don’t watch the station, or the show. I’m not even advocating what he does. As a matter of fact I work in the oncology unit for hospital in Indiana. I watch people suffer and die every day. Hope and kindness is sometimes the only thing you can offer someone. If you have ever been next to someone struggling to live, or seen their families overwhelmed with grief ANY comfort you can offer them helps. I do not believe in religious teachings, but I will pray with a dying Christian, Jew, Muslim… It doesn’t matter. What helps them matters, even if I don’t believe it and even if a stranger doesn’t approve. I don’t mean to engage in an overdrawn side conversation with you Johnny. I certainly don’t intend to agitate you. Thank you for your candor, I appreciate your opinion and (if you celebrate it) I hope you and your loved ones have a wonderful Thanksgiving.
ValerI: Anything easily discounted can be settled in a well-written paragraph. Reality is also subjective.
Wow. Everything in that paragraph is mostly wrong. First of all, no. Some things need to be dismantled piece by piece in writing. Orac, in this case, was explaining the whys and hows of Mr. Goldsmith’s wrongness, a thing that couldn’t be explained satisfactorily in one paragraph. You wouldn’t read a newspaper that was full of one paragraph articles, or a book that was only a paragraph long, would you? (of course, you might not read at all, in which case you should probably trot along.)
Secondly ‘reality’ is not subjective. Certain PARTs of that reality may be subjective, but not the central facts of it. For example, in my slice of reality, it is windy and cold. In someone’s elses’ slice of the world, it may be a balmy, beautiful day. But both of us are subject to the same laws of physics, both of us live in a place where World War 1 and 2 happened, and both of us are affected by political and economic decisions half a world away.
Finally, what is this ‘script’ you are babbling about, fluff-brain?
Johnny: Wouldn’t you agree that giving people the information they can use to accurately identify the lies of a con man, or the ravings of a lunatic, a noble service? Should lies go unchallenged? Should the truth not be spread far and wide?
People like the lies and hate the truth, as we’ve seen in the past year. Maybe it’s better to just let people live in delusion. After all, no one cares if kids die, or if a “healer” kills someone by convincing them to forego medical treatment. Most people want to be stupid.
Off topic: I ran across my copies of Pacific Rim and the Martian and finally realized what seems so odd to me about them. It’s not the giant monsters or the idea that someone could be stranded on Mars..it’s the idea that people would cooperate.
And sigh, yet more newagey fluff for brains commenters.
Jesus could heal people – why not Charlie Goldsmith? God can work miracles through anyone.
Because he is not the son of some random god? By the hammer of Thor, which deity? The one for gullible folks? Or the one for those who actually use the brains?
You have a few theological problems here, including (1) the failure of anyone since Jesus to routinely be working miracles, with the concomitant implications, and (2) your not considering the possibility that Charlie Goldsmith is actually the Antichrist, or at least channeling some sort of demoniacal power to “work his miracles.” Perhaps he’s actually buying the souls of those he heals.
This author is an IDIOT!!!!!! I don’t care how many degrees he has. Evidently, His “Dr” only means that he can read a book and take a test….Energy healing WORKS! I am EVIDENCE that energy healing works. It has kept me off the surgical table for almost 2 years. I have gone to traditional doctors who had no answers, just pills. Dr Gorski seems to be threatened, as many in his profession SHOULD BE=Quacks , money hungry DRs they are, and don’t understand patients’ needs. All they want to do is TESTS (because they are too stupid to figure things out on their own like old docs used to), and just give em a pill!. Ironically, I am from the health field, and having had experienced it first hand, I am convinced that energy healing works. Perhaps, it doesn’t work on some people because IF you take away their illness, you take away their identity-it’s psychiatric….BTW- Jesus was a man who used energy healing….the son of God thing was given to him by people, because they thought he performed “miracles”.
Oh, you poor child. It must have triggered you to realize that there are those who disagree with you. Does it trigger you that we have no reason to believe a word you wrote?
For all we know is that you work publicity for Goldsmith’s TV show, and this some way to throw shade on this website. Perhaps you are just a gullible snowflake. No matter, if you want to have an adult discussion then you better be prepared to bring up real PubMed indexed scientific evidence and not unverifiable rants.
Hell, I haven’t been on “the surgical table” in over a decade, no energy healing required.
“Ironically, I am from the health field”
Probably delivers lunch to the construction crew at the hospital.
It is clear that those who speak want to be heard but they do so at the expense of listening. Openness to thought and ideas seems to be sacrificed at the altar of self-declared authority trying to prove intelligence. Is it any wonder that Orac attacks rather than engages, denies rather than searches, all in the name of science. Perhaps that is where ignoring (ignorance) gives birth. Trump is the measure of perfection in this regard for many people today.
Is there anything about the post you think is inaccurate?
More generally, if you look at the post, it is not “not listening”. It pays close attention to the claims of Mr. Goldsmith and his supporters, and explains why they’re unfounded. Listening is not the same as accepting uncritically.
Indeed. I rather suspect that what Mr. Whitall doesn’t like is that I actually did pay attention to Goldsmith’s claims and then showed why they are unsupported by anything resembling halfway decent scientific or clinical evidence.
Of course, there are gross inaccuracies in the post since it is based on your premise of being right whereas what you write is simply what you believe and can justify. More important, what you believe is based on factors which you have accepted as “The Truth” and from those assumptions you feel that your perceptions of Charlie’s beliefs and actions have the high ground and therefore are worthy of condemnation and attack by you. To value your mind as infallible, sufficiently so you can feel justified to belittle another mind is nothing more than an absence of integrity.
“Of course, there are gross inaccuracies…”
List them, and provide the verifiable literature to support your claims.
OK. If there are “gross inaccuracies” in my post, list them. Prove they’re inaccuracies. Anything less than that is posturing.
You seem to not have read my comments or they went over your head perhaps. Your premise requiring that you are right in what you think and the “proof ” you demand as long as you agree is my point. You just aren’t right, simply based on what you judge are your justifications. What gives you away is your attack about me if I don’t give you proof according to your terms.
It’s sad that you have to validate yourself in that manner. A great discussion comes from many perspectives unless your goal is to minimize and ridicule others.
“You just aren’t right, simply based on what you judge are your justifications.”
So you have nothing. That is an argument by a five year old: “No, no, no! I don’t wanna, you can’t make me! I don’t have to tell you anything. So there!”
You reveal yourself for what you are not with each attack you make. So sad!
Aw, poor snowflake. First you make a bunch of random assertions, which were a series of insults (“Perhaps that is where ignoring (ignorance) gives birth.”).
So you were asked three times to provide examples of the “ignorance”, but responded that merely asking for your evidence was an “attack.” With the childish rant that “You just aren’t right…” Obviously it upsets you that we have little patience with passive aggressive tantrums of “I’m right, you’re wrong” arguments without much substance.
Perhaps you should go back, list the inaccuracies in the the above article, and post the verifiable scientific evidence to support your opinions you will be treated as an adult.
For instance if you are going to claim “energy healing” is real, then you will need to show you actually understand some basic physics. First you should tell us the difference between kinetic energy and potential energy, and how they are related.
Let’s see. You keep saying there are “gross inaccuracies” in my post. I keep asking you what they are and for you to show me why they are “gross inaccuracies” using verifiable sources and science. You keep whining and then make comments like the one above, which doesn’t make any sense. (WTF does “Your premise requiring that you are right in what you think and the ‘proof’ you demand as long as you agree is my point” even mean? It’s word salad, gibberish, nonsense.) Then you just repeat that Chris and I are “wrong” again.
Seriously, man. Your criticisms are utterly pathetic.
My, my but the ego has been touched. I have no reason to give you “proof” of anything. Nor do I have to convince you of anything. My thoughts have nothing to do with getting approval from you, nor is it worth continuing in this time waster.
As I thought. You’re full of BS. You can’t tell me even a single fact that I got wrong or even a single error of interpretation. Seriously, I’m laughing at you.
<
blockquote>
What gives you away is your attack about me if I don’t give you proof according to your terms.
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blockquote>
OK. I’ll play along. Give us proof that our host is wrong according to your terms. What is your best argument that our host is wrong? Convince me.
Or should I just accept that our host is wrong because you say so? Because, so far, that’s all you’ve done.
Did I do wrong again?
You guys running this ridiculous website are the quacks….GFYS
Aw, poor snowflake. Does this site anger you because it shows that Mr. Goldsmith and your brilliance is underwhelming? Go find a safe space.
I want to start by saying in no way do I currently believe Goldsmith’s claims are tested and verified. I do find it astonishing how closed minded this article is. Science and medicine now versus a hundred years ago looks quite different. Answers are found each day. I don’t rule out something simply because I can’t explain it right now.
Just a few examples, how are some born with the ability talent to draw, paint, play instruments? I realize brain activity studies have been performed on some individuals with specific talents that show changes in brain activity. Maybe this could be part of a study on individual’s such as Goldsmith who claim to have such abilities?
“Science and medicine now versus a hundred years ago looks quite different. Answers are found each day. I don’t rule out something simply because I can’t explain it right now.”
Uh, huh. It also depends on how you understand science a hundred years ago, and now. Part of modern physics education is learning how the concepts were discovered. This includes finding ways to measure very very small things. This is why the Large Hadron Collider includes a huge circle, and the LIGO needs observatories several thousands of kilometers apart to discover black holes merging.
If they can do that, how come they cannot detect this “energy” from a human body. Sure, one can detect the heat signature with infrared sensor, and motion from a motion detector. But what about that “energy.”
I’m envisioning something like a tempera-smeared infant being offered to a Theremin here, a la Roots.
As much as I respect science, I can’t help but wonder why you seem so hell-bent on knocking an approach to healing that appears to be low-risk and apparently brings relief to some sufferers. Goldsmith practices his method of healing without knocking traditional medicine; in fact, he acknowledges the healing potential of both, while making no guarantees. If scientific approaches haven’t brought a sufferer relief after several years, what’s the harm in their trying another approach? What if the sufferer were you or a loved one? Would you reject a potential opportunity for relief just because it hasn’t been scientifically proven? What about prayer?
Please define what you mean by “approach.”
Because we are scientists and we want to know!
Actually, I think we take Charlie’s claims more seriously than he does. I suspect he has never heard of Richard Feynman’s maxim that it is important not to fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.
As for why not try this method of healing, check out this list.
http://www.whatstheharm.net/energymedicine.html
But also, as a person who has a degree in physics and has done a little bit of science, it irritates me when a person uses a word, energy, that has a real meaning in science without regard to that meaning to give apparent legitimacy to their claims.
Energy is the ability to do work, which means to accelerate an object or move one against a force of resistance. It can take many forms and Orac uses it in his treatment of cancer patients. He uses electromagnetic energy in the form of X-rays to do mammograms to detect breast cancer. He uses chemical energy stored in his body to do the physical work of a needle biopsy or breast surgery. If chemotherapy is needed, the chemical reactions that make it work release a tiny amount of kinetic energy as heat which can be detected and measured. If he has to use gamma rays for radiation therapy, those are driven by the strong (or possibly weak) force which we can also detect and measure.
And we get very excited about discovering new particles and forces, as the scientists at the Large Hadron Collider hope to do with an improvement in their system.
So, when someone claims to have discovered a new way to use energy to do something, we want to know. What is this energy? How do you detect and measure it? How is it transmitted?
But Charlie doesn’t have answers to these questions.
He doesn’t know if it’s carried by one of the four forces we have identified, or some unknown force which I’ll call jeeberwhiz just to distinguish it.
Scientists can detect tiny amounts of energy. They can bleed off energy from a particle until it is absolutely not moving at all. Can Charlie use this jeeberwhiz energy to move such a particle? He certainly hasn’t demonstrated it. Scientists can detect particles that interact with other particles so weakly that millions of them pass completely through the earth every day without interacting with a single atom. But, they haven’t detected the particles that transmit jeeberwhiz energy.
And his claims for healing aren’t very impressive. All he has shown is that if he tells people he is healing them, some of them (not all) will report they feel better the next day! Big deal. Comparisons were made to Jesus. But Jesus could heal the lame. If Charlie’s healing is that good, why can’t he use jeeberwhiz to heal Richard Sherman’s Achilles tendon?
So the question for Charlie and Joe Campbell is this.
What is this “energy” that is used for healing? How do we detect it and measure it so we can verify it and learn to use it better?
Is it real energy or is it jeeberwhiz
You’re a quack! How do we know who you are? You don’t even use your real name. You’re a “surgeon”? YOU prove it. YOU prove that Charlie didn’t heal those people. Goodness, I hate people who just spread venom without facts… you want to pick on his words? He didn’t say he was a scientist. Who have you healed, Mr. “Surgeon”? You prove yourself first before you start attacking others. I feel sorry for you, truly; you have a lot of hate and you are the one with no facts.
And…you fail the intelligence test, which is to discover my real name, one of the worst kept secrets (if not THE worst-kept secret) in the blogosphere.
Because we are scientists and we want to know!
Actually, I think we take Charlie’s claims more seriously than he does. I suspect he has never heard of Richard Feynman’s maxim that it is important not to fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.
As for why not try this method of healing, check out this list.
http://www.whatstheharm.net/energymedicine.html
But also, as a person who has a degree in physics and has done a little bit of science, it irritates me when a person uses a word, energy, that has a real meaning in science without regard to that meaning to give apparent legitimacy to their claims.
Energy is the ability to do work, which means to accelerate an object or move one against a force of resistance. It can take many forms and Orac uses it in his treatment of cancer patients. He uses electromagnetic energy in the form of X-rays to do mammograms to detect breast cancer. He uses chemical energy stored in his body to do the physical work of a needle biopsy or breast surgery. If chemotherapy is needed, the chemical reactions that make it work release a tiny amount of kinetic energy as heat which can be detected and measured. If he has to use gamma rays for radiation therapy, those are driven by the strong (or possibly weak) force which we can also detect and measure.
And we get very excited about discovering new particles and forces, as the scientists at the Large Hadron Collider hope to do with an improvement in their system.
So, when someone claims to have discovered a new way to use energy to do something, we want to know. What is this energy? How do you detect and measure it? How is it transmitted?
But Charlie doesn’t have answers to these questions.
He doesn’t know if it’s carried by one of the four forces we have identified, or some unknown force which I’ll call jeeberwhiz just to distinguish it.
Scientists can detect tiny amounts of energy. They can bleed off energy from a particle until it is absolutely not moving at all. Can Charlie use this jeeberwhiz energy to move such a particle? He certainly hasn’t demonstrated it. Scientists can detect particles that interact with other particles so weakly that millions of them pass completely through the earth every day without interacting with a single atom. But, they haven’t detected the particles that transmit jeeberwhiz energy.
And his claims for healing aren’t very impressive. All he has shown is that if he tells people he is healing them, some of them (not all) will report they feel better the next day! Big deal. Comparisons were made to Jesus. But Jesus could heal the lame. If Charlie’s healing is that good, why can’t he use jeeberwhiz to heal Richard Sherman’s Achilles tendon?
So the question for Charlie and Joe Campbell is this.
What is this “energy” that is used for healing? How do we detect it and measure it so we can verify it and learn to use it better?
Is it real energy or is it jeeberwhiz?
One must admit that this definition from first-year mechanics is rather circular. Chad Orzel had a decent post on the subject at the old SB, as I recall.
Anyway, I’m curious how these hit-and-run Charlie-lovers keep scuttling out of the woodwork.
Agreed! This Orac person is a total douche…dedicating so much time and effort to bashing someone who is helping people as far as I can tell. Good grief. Where is the sense in that? This article/page is more about Orac than Charlie.
“as far as I can tell”
That’s your failing in a nutshell.
This web site has a poop and scoop law so please remember to clean up your droppings before you vanish.
Charlie would you call me
Are you expecting Mr. Goldsmith to somehow be aware, through the ether, that you want to commune with him?
I had written a comment which seems to have a problem posting, so I’ll post it in bits here.
So, to Frank and Joe and Alan and Sondergade and all the rest of you who think this energy healing really works, here it is.
Do you believe in God? Do you believe in mediums? Do you only believe what you know, see or experience? Before you call something fraud, make sure YOU know what you are talking about.
Certainly, Gertie. Though please explain a few things about this energy stuff and deities.
What is the difference between kinetic energy and potential energy? And how are those two energies related?
By the hammer of Thor: which “God”? The one that likes his followers unquestioning and gullible? Or the one that gives you free will to actually learn how to thing critically. Since this article about someone who makes impossible claims, I assume your deity is the one for gullible folk.
I think I would prefer the on that prevents typos: “how to think critically.”
We’re you asking me, Gertie.
Actually I do believe in God, although my theology has tended to the God Is Dead variety of late.
But religion is based on the evidence of thinks hoped for and the assurance of things unseen.
I prefer to put my faith in evidence that can be seen and tested by anyone, which is what science is based on.
And Charlie has provided very little of that.
Do you have any thoughts about my comment at 1:31 pm?
I was going to take a leap here and guess that these three questions were supposed to represent the same thing, rather than being some sort of progression, but that fell apart with the communicating-with-the-dead part. I’ve already questionted this pseudo-theological issue. Are you, Gertie, going to cough something up, unlike your compatriot?
“Do you believe in God”?
No.
“Do you believe in mediums?”
Heck, no!
“Do you only believe what you know, see or experience?”
That all depends on what you mean by “know”. I know atoms exist though I have never seen an individual atom. I know the earth is round although I’ve never been far enough above it to see the whole thing at once.
Somehow relieving people’s chronic pain is bad because it doesn’t fit inside a box.
What is bad is making a claim and failing to back it up with actual evidence. If you had actually read the above article, you would realize is begging Goldsmith to prove his claims.
I unscientifically submit that you guys are all self-serving, closed-minded, pompous, pedantic, pontificating assholes. Theoretically speaking. Your heads are so squarely lodged up your own asses that you refuse to believe that anything not proven by theorems and postulates must not be true. A very intelligent Arthur C. Clark once said “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” 100 years ago, WIFI, Bluetooth, and any of the iPhones we all carry would have been considered impossible and witchcraft. Just because your Cambridge-level scientific tests can’t explain something, doesn’t mean it isn’t true or does not hold merit. Modern science classified chiropractic medicine as quackery, non-science and pseudo-medicine for decades but it is now a vastly accepted form of healing. Closed-minded, self-important individuals that think they know everything because they have some education or a few credentials and maybe a few letters after their name are a lot of what’s wrong with this world. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with doubt and a modicum of skepticism, but being open to new things or ideas is how real breakthroughs and change come to fruition and making assumptions about something you know nothing about, quite honestly, speaks volumes about your intelligence, or the lack thereof as the case may be. Some of our greatest advances in human history have been made when someone said “I don’t know, but I’m willing to learn and be open-minded and find out.” Charlie Goldsmith is a humble, giving, soft-spoken, unassuming, caring, genuine person who is trying very hard, through extreme self-sacrifice and much verbal assault by people like yourself, to help as many people as he possibly can with his gift. He has never accepted any form of payment for what he does to help people, LONG before TLC showed any interest in offering him a show. He discovered his gift when he was 18 and he is now 37. Just so you don’t hurt your little mind doing the math, that’s 19 years that he has been helping people with no remuneration to him in any way. He realizes quite well the stigma attached to energy healing due to all of the frauds and public opinion and yet he still has the wherewithal to put himself out there to be ridiculed by small-minded individuals like you and your “colleagues” because he genuinely wants to help others in pain. As for the mention of his two businesses, those have been mentioned by others and NOT by Charlie himself to promote them. He had those businesses up and running and doing VERY well long before TLC put him on the global stage in his own show. He has historically used the success of those businesses to allow himself the freedom to be able to help others without any compensation from those he helps. Honestly, I would say you should be ashamed for attacking a man whom is simply trying to help others but people like you typically don’t know the meaning of the word shame. You simply mock that which you do not understand and it’s really very sad indeed. You should attempt to know what you’re talking about before you go on another rant about your next slanted topic to the world. I would say that I’ll pray for you but you probably don’t believe in such an archaic and unscientific thing as prayer either.
“Just so you don’t hurt your little mind doing the math, that’s 19 years that he has been helping people with no remuneration to him in any way.”
And absolutely no evidence that it works. Did you read the above article? It can be summed up with this one quote from it: “Uh-huh. Then prove it. No more bullshit. Just prove it.”
The major problem that you and others have is that you fail to understand the basic concepts of physics. This is why I ask about the relationship between kinetic and potential energies, something that is taught in freshman physics classes. But since you presented us with an unreadable wall of text, I doubt you are not willing to learn basic physics.
This is why I need a deity to help me with typos: “I doubt you are
notwilling to learn basic physics.”What technology is Mr. Goldsmith using?
Credulity.
“Spagyric microdosing“?
Witchcraft? In 1917? Whatever. Perhaps you could explain what the hell this passage has to do with Goldsmith in the first place.
Behold a clinical trial involving “The Lightning Process.”
Do you know who I was quoting?
Do you know whom I was replying to?
No, because you seem to be avoiding the nested threading. 😉
Anyway, you comment was cryptic. I am familiar with that subject since I have listened to Tuller on the This Week in Virology. He and others have ruffled some feathers:
http://www.undiscoveredpodcast.org/sick-and-tired.html
Dr. Hall covered at SBM:
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/treating-chronic-fatigue-syndrome-with-cognitive-behavioral-therapy-and-graded-exercise-therapy-how-the-pace-trial-got-it-wrong/
What was cryptic? Phil Parker’s another Goldsmith type.
Well that will learn me to not just skim the link! Obviously I was hoodwinked by my familiarity with the previous stuff on PACE by Tuller, and now it has gone sideways with this holistic nonsense.
I need to go hoist on my own petard now. I think the next time Tuller is on TWiV will be very entertaining.
I’m trying to give it a chance, but I still don’t like it very much. It doesn’t work well for multiple replies and replies-to-replies (which is why I’m not using it now.)
@ JP:
I’m trying to use the thready nests/ nested threads. It sometimes works- especially if you’re the first response HOWEVER I do think that things can get muddled and it loses that real timey order feel ( I know. I know, the times are labelled) but still.
We has what we has. Something is better than nothing.
There is a simple test for all healers …
Grow back an amputated leg or fix a polio victim with an emaciated leg to wholeness and full usage.
He is quoted as saying ““To be honest, sometimes I’ll work on something that—medically—is seemingly simple and not fix it. And something that is medically complex—something medically incurable, for example—that might be quite easy for me,”
So put up or shut up…. Polio and the aftereffects are medically complex to cure… (in fact there is no cure)… so if he succeeds he wins the argument totally and we all trust and believe in him.
If he fails then he is just another person claiming a falsehood. Of course he has probably had some good affects on people’s lives who have trusted him and have felt better… But it wasn’t him…It was the actual person’s belief in something not true that had the effect.
The unwell healed themselves… whether it is permanent relief or not only time will tell and science won’t get the chance to investigate properly.
So come on Charlie prove us wrong… Cure a few disabled people’s withered legs or arms and then we might take you seriously.
[…] Zymo Maurer on Charlie Goldsmith: A new celebrity quack arises, enabled by TLC […]
this site sucks the big one…….you losers haven’t got a clue……why don’t you respectfully shut this POC site down!!!!
Because it irritates people like you? ?
What do you mean by “POC”?
If you mean “piece of crap”, why don’t you say that? Or, since you’re using the abbreviation, why not use the much more common “POS”?
If you mean “person of color” (the most common meaning of POC on the internet at the moment), well, that’s both very odd and at least somewhat racist.
Why don’t you skeptics talk to the people he’s healed? Do you think they give a fuck about physics or trying to explain why it works? Talk to the doctors he’s working with. In the meantime please try to control your jealousy and bruised egos.
Do you have access to the complete list of patients in the study 2 years ago?
A better question would be why the authors of that study didn’t do any follow up.
Having suffered a period of back pain myself for about 6 months, I know there were days it hurt more and days it hurt less. So just telling people you’re going to do something and then have some of them say, “Yes, I feel better now” is not very impressive evidence.
What skeptics do is look at the evidence and see if it supports the claims. In this case it is very unimpressive.
Are you one of them?
Why don’t you believers talk to the people whom he tried to treat, but did not help at all?
Can you explain quantum entanglement? What about Tesla’s wireless power? What about the newly emerging technology of how quantum physics affects biochemistry? What if we just dont understand as much about science as we so arrogantly think we do. “To raise new questions and new possibilities to solve old problems from a new angle requires creative imagination and marks new advancement in science.”
Can you?
Actually, there are others here who can. Do you understand energy? If you can then you can explain the difference between kinetic and potential energy and then how they are related.
Wow whoever wrote this I feel sorry for you. A super angry miserable person with a closed mind and not very intelligent either. Clearly your life is miserable since you have to angrily attack someone you don’t even know. Sad.
“angrily attack someone you don’t even know”
Mirror, mirror.
Here is a simple test: tell us what Orac does for his paycheck.
By the way, his identity is the worst kept “secret” on teh internets. Especially since the information is accessible with just one click on this web page. We minions use this as an intelligence test. Seriously, you are not doing well right now.
Too many people in our society who think they onow it all without research. As a sophomore in highscool (decades ago) I learned from a writing teacher how rediculous it is to make an argument if you don’t research both sides. I was 16 years old. To constantly hear/read comments from adults who are claiming to understand ANYTHING while making it so obvious that their knowledge base is one-sided is unbelievable, and embarrassing to those of us who are true researchers and scientists. So many of you are pretty much advertising your ignorance. In rare cases, individuals have access to an energy that is strong enough to change the frequencies of imbalances in the body. Everything (in world and in the body: hormones, neurotransmitters, bacteria…) has it’s own MEASURABLE frequency. All frequency has the potential to influence other frequencies. It’s always the people who know the least who go on an emotional rant and claim that they have all the answers. So sad.
Everything (in world and in the body: hormones, neurotransmitters, bacteria…) has it’s own MEASURABLE frequency.
Have you been measured? What’s the frequency, Kenneth? What’s the Kenneth frequency?
The decoherence will get you every time.
I’m curious why saying “the decoherence will get you every time” resulted in comment oblivion.
Oh, rats, I’ve tried to respond twice without realizing that autofill had chosen the wrong E-mail address. Anyway, something something decoherence something.
“Anyway, something something decoherence something.”
Sounds about right. Apparently “frequencies” is the Newtonian version of “quantum” nonsense.
You can have both:
“Although I didn’t have a clue what we were looking at on those computer monitors, Les continued to invite me to his after-hours lab sessions, usually giving me an ‘important job’ of some kind. Using his unique Wavelength Division Multiplexing skills and an algorithm-driven version of Strong’s Hebrew concordance that he concocted, Les collected nearly a terabyte of what he called, ‘quantum conversations.'”
Fortunately structures, small machines and even spring operated wrist watches are all well within the size and speed to be modeled by basic Newtonian laws.
Do tell us about those energies. Please tell us the difference between kinetic and potential energy, and the how they are related. While you are at it, could you please tell us how you get the eigenvectors and their corresponding eigenvalues for those hormones, neurotransmitters and bacteria.
Mostly because you seem to be using vocabulary you do not understand, mostly because you missed the side of the story of how physics actually works.
Disclaimer: former structural dynamics and loads engineer, specialized in random vibration. My main tools were nonlinear second order multivariable differential equations, and the magic that is Euler’s Formula.
I’ll happily confess my complete ignorance of anyone who has been independently confirmed to be able to “have access to an energy” and use it to “change the frequencies of imbalances in the body”, so please enlighten me.
Please name names and cite references for where the confirmation was published.
Also, how is this frequency measured?
What is vibrating at that frequency?
Is it an audio frequency that my ear drum can vibrate at and let me hear.
Or is it one of the frequencies that are measured when they attach electrodes to my skull for an EEG?
Or perhaps one of the frequencies that my doctor hears when he places a stethoscope on my chest?
For finding resonance you use the hybrid fruits of a flirtation between a grid dip meter and a hurdy gurdy that was once married to a fretless banjo. Or, for lower frequencies, one of those vibrating beds powered through a hydraulic hose the size of Popeye’s forearm. Something from Rohde & Schwarz would be good for emitted energy.
If I could still see well enough to do such things, I rather fancy the notion of making steam punk Rife machines.
~~~
For those who miss Friday woo, this, from the CBC:
‘This is snake oil’: Scientists don’t buy balance-boosting clips featured on Dragons’ Den
Company claims $80 clips use quantum entanglement to boost wellness; Marketplace tests suggest otherwise
Hilarious.
In the real world vibration test structures often include huge slabs of granite. That was the large mass, and that sucker did not have any measurable deflections.
Fucking Scab. I hope you get cancer and die, whoever wrote this. Fuck you.
The brilliance of that comment can only be measured with a yoctoscale ruler.
Positive or negative axis?
Al
Having lost a brother-in-law and sister-in-law to cancer, I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.
As far as I know, Charlie’s only claimed cures are to make people with back pain feel better the next day.
Would you please provide a citation for any confirmed cancer cures he has achieved?
The history of medicine includes many examples of ideas that were initially ridiculed or rejected by the medical establishment but that later became widely adopted.Such as antiseptic handwashing,viruses and cancer and newborn incubators. Here is a collection of some of the better known examples; in highlighting them.
https://www.medscape.com/features/slideshow/medical-breakthroughs#page=1
Therefore what?
‘But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.”
—Carl Sagan