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Complementary and alternative medicine Friday Woo Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Your Friday Dose of Woo: Help me Obi-Wan. You’re my only hope.

In the year and a half or so that I’ve been doing Your Friday Dose of Woo, I must admit that I’ve come across some truly weird stuff. Stuff so weird that, after reading it, you wonder either, “How on earth could someone seriously think something like this is true or would work?” or “How […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Friday Woo Medicine Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Your Friday Dose of Woo: Water, water, everywhere, and a lot of woo to drink

Water. It’s the essence of life. Our bodies are mostly made up of it, and we can’t live without it for very long. Our cells both contain it and are bathed in it. The enzymatic reactions necessary for life require an aqueous solution to work. Don’t think these facts have escaped the woo-meisters, either. Water […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Friday Woo Humor Medicine Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Your Friday Dose of Woo: It’s all in the shoes, or is it?

One of the favorite failings in logic and science among the woo-friendly crowd is the ever-famous one of confusing correlation with causation, also known as non causa pro causa, which means “non-cause for the cause.” Examples of this are rampant, and include the antivaccinationists who confuse correlation with vaccination and the age at which autism […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Friday Woo Medicine Religion Skepticism/critical thinking

Your Friday Dose of Woo: Holy Koranic Dr. Emoto, Batman!

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about woo in the more than a year and a half that I’ve been doing this regular Friday feature, it’s that there’s definitely a religious element to virtually all woo. In essence, it requires believing in something that cannot be demonstrated scientifically, often despite science outright refuting it. For […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Friday Woo Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Your Friday Dose of Woo: How can you make acupuncture even more unbelievable? Oh, yes, add “harmonic” healing!

Vibrations. After a year and a half of doing Your Friday Dose of Woo every week with only a couple of breaks, it’s all I can feel or hear sometimes. Vibrations. What is it about woo and “vibrations,” “harmonics,” or “waves,” anyway? It doesn’t matter if it’s sound waves or electromagnetic waves. Somehow the denizens […]