Health Wars: In the Trenches Against Alternative Medicine

“For more than 130 years, the National Geographic Society has been at the forefront of combining science, exploration, and storytelling to better understand the world around us,” a fundraising letter begins. “National Geographic Society is determined to be the organization people around the world can turn to for information they can trust.” Its long and …

Nature’s Best Remedies: Top Medicinal Herbs, Spices, and Foods for Health and Well Being, by Nancy J. Hajeski. National Geographic. 318 pp. $35.00. The National Geographic store proclaims, “This authoritative guide to the foods, herbs, spices, essential oils, and other natural substances that alleviate common ailments will enhance your life—from treating illness to sharpening the …

Traditional Chinese medicine is a ‘gem’ of the country’s scientific heritage.” —President of China Xi Jinping Since its founding in 1948, maintenance of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) report is among the many tasks allocated to the World Health Organization (WHO). The ICD was initially started by the U.S. International Statistical Institute as the …

Water’s ability to cleanse obviously made it a natural choice for ritual washing (such as baptism in Christianity and mikvah in Judaism). And its power to soothe a minor burn, quench a thirst, or provide other relief naturally inspired further medicinal uses. Belief in the supernatural extended the supposed powers of water in various ways—hence …

The laser is one of the technological wonders invented during the past century. It took the genius of Einstein and Kastler, then the competition between many brilliant minds of the time, including Townes, Schawlow, Maiman, and Gould, to emit the first laser beam from a ruby in 1960. Since then, applications have continuously increased in …

Phrenology was Franz Gall’s (1758–1828) and later Johann Spurzheim’s (1776–1832) attempt to correlate behavior with skull shape. Gall published his work between 1810 and 1819 in four volumes, titled The Anatomy and Physiology of the Nervous System in General and of the Brain in Particular, with Observations on the Possibility of Discovering the Number of …

Pseudoscience operates in particular social and political environments. The dominant political ideology in India today is Hindutva (“Hindu-ness”), which is associated with the conservative and nationalist governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The political aspect of this ideology seeks to define Indian culture in terms of Hindu values, and it …

If flipping through the pages of Skeptical Inquirer shows us anything (and it does—the editor made sure I put that in), it is that science is misunderstood, misused, and misrepresented throughout our society. And if the United States is known for anything, it’s for a system where if you are wronged, the first reaction is …

We present in this special, expanded issue seven timely articles on “The Health Wars: In the Trenches against Alternative Medicine.” So-called alternative medicine (or SCAM, the telling acronym used by medical scientist Edzard Ernst as the title of his most recent book) is all around us. It has managed to imbed itself into medical institutions, …

Walmart is committing wide-scale consumer fraud and endangering the health of its customers through its sale and marketing of homeopathic medicines, the Center for Inquiry (CFI) alleges in a lawsuit filed in the District of Columbia on May 20. CFI says the mega-retailer is deceiving consumers by making no meaningful distinction between real medicine and …

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in May posted warning letters to five companies that produce products labeled as homeopathic. It accused them of significant violations of current good manufacturing practice regulations. Four of the warning letters pertain to companies that jointly produced a product labeled as homeopathic that posed a significant safety risk …

In their book A Deal with the Devil: The Dark and Twisted True Story of One of the Biggest Cons in History, investigative reporters Blake Ellis and Melanie Hicken exposed the complex inner workings of a case of psychic fraud that spanned several decades and bilked over $200,000,000 from the mostly elderly victims. Their tale …

The venerable science publication Nature revealed in May 2019 that the internet technology company Google funded research in cold fusion to the tune of about $10 million. A group of scientists from reputable institutions—MIT, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, the University of British Columbia, the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, and the University of Maryland—worked for …

The results of Wellcome Global Monitor 2018, a massive survey on public attitudes toward science and health, were released June 19, 2019. The Wellcome Trust in the U.K. commissioned this survey from Gallup. Among the topics investigated were understanding of (and interest in) science and health, level of trust in science and health professionals, attitudes …

Murray Gell-Mann, the brilliant physicist who won the Nobel Prize in physics a half-century ago when he was barely forty years old, died May 24, 2019, at his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He was eighty-nine. Gell-Mann helped develop the “standard model” of particle physics. He introduced the concept of quantum “strangeness.”  He brought …

In June 2019, breathless headlines referred to an “FBI Bigfoot Investigation,” suggesting that newly declassified FBI files shed light on the venerable manlike mystery. As skeptics expected, it was much ado about nothing. In 1976, prominent Bigfoot researcher Peter Byrne, director of the Bigfoot Information Center and Exhibition, wrote to the FBI asking if they …

Stanton Terry Friedman (July 29, 1934–May 13, 2019) was one of the world’s best known and most controversial flying saucer proponents. Like some other paranormalists, Friedman would come to parlay a lackluster science career into fringe stardom. Although he constantly referred to himself as a “nuclear physicist,” he held no doctorate, having only bachelor and …

A “wonderful sea-snake” was repeatedly seen in the area of Gloucester Bay and Nahant Bay, Massachusetts, in August 1817 and again in 1819. Although attracting “hundreds of curious spectators,” plus a large reward for “his snakeship” alive or dead, the great creature escaped any such fate (Drake 1883, 156–159). The visitations have been reported in …

Cover Image: The late medium Eddie Burks along with the author (at the time beardless and still with his Medusa-like hair).   The old man sitting in a chair put his hands to his chest and grabbed his sweater, his fingers tightening. He spoke in a whisper, his eyes shut. “Yes … I feel that …

Opium, a dried latex collected from the opium poppy, was the original “wonder drug.” It effectively relieved pain and had other medicinal effects—and incidentally produced both euphoria and addiction. There is archaeological evidence that it was used as early as 5700 BC. It was the active ingredient in laudanum and paregoric. For decades, these opiates …

Cover Image: Logo for the 1973 film (Wikimedia)   Exorcism is back. For many of us, our most vivid images of exorcism come from the 1973 movie, The Exorcist, based on the William Peter Blatty novel of the same name. Who can forget Linda Blair’s screaming, spinning head, and green projectile vomit? But the latest …

From scientific meetings to corporate boardrooms, many leaders of society are deeply concerned about what they perceive as a loss of public faith in technological innovation and the scientific enterprise. Rising tensions over issues such as automation, gene editing, and the transition away from fossil fuels are rooted in broader conflicts related to globalization, modernization, …

Q:  Until this morning, I’d thought subliminal messages were prohibited by international and federal law. I’m sending this to all my friends in the United States and abroad. This is not a political issue; it’s a human rights issue. We’re all in danger. Please contact your representatives and tell them to enact legislation that prohibits subliminal messages. The Facebook …

DNA Misconceptions Carl Zimmer’s article “Seven Big Misconceptions about Heredity” (May/June 2019) makes some excellent points, and I would like to amplify a bit on “Misconception 1: Finding a Special Ancestor Makes You Special.” Using the generally accepted rule of thumb that there are three generations per century, it is possible to estimate how many …

Pseudoscience in Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy: A Skeptical Field Guide. Edited by Stephen Hupp with a foreword by Scott O. Lilienfeld. Cambridge University Press, 2019. ISBN 978-1-107-17531. 314 pp. Paperback, $26.44. Pseudoscience in Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy: A Skeptical Field Guide is a new book with multiple authors edited by Stephen Hupp. They point out …

Chernobyl. Created and written by Craig Manzin. Directed by Johan Renck. HBO and Sky Atlantic. 2019. 5 hours, 30 minutes in five parts.   The 1986 explosion of the Number 4 unit of the nuclear power station at Chernobyl, Ukraine, was the worst nuclear accident in history. The accident and the costs of responding to …