What a prick!

People wonder why I try to suck the joy out of life by destroying their deeply held beliefs when they are otherwise harmless. Then I point to stories like this one and those people generally shut up.

Three men, imprisoned in Vietnam since 2002 for gang-raping an 18-year-old girl, were released after an acupuncturist examined them and made some wholly unscientific claims that apparently nobody was around to debunk.

Pham Thi Hong, an acupuncturist at the national traditional medicine hospital, said prison officials had sent one of the men to her for treatment in 2006.

She said examination of a pressure point beneath the convict’s ear showed a small capillary was unbroken, which Vietnamese traditional medicine holds to mean that he was a virgin. Hong then examined the other two men.

“I recognised these three men had never had sex with women,” Hong said.

How a capillary in your ear could be broken via sexual intercourse, but not rubbing one out or even just having a wet dream, I’ll never know. No idea whether this is because of his training as an acupuncturist (which has no scientific validity outside of the endorphin rush that comes of small amounts of pain), or his training as a “traditional medicine” (read: witch) doctor. Either way, the capillary idea is fucking nonsense and three probable gang rapists are free because nobody said so. Whether there were legitimate issues in the original investigation or not, the presence of an unburst blood vessel that nobody has ever even linked properly with virginity is no grounds for reopening it. Present some real goddamn evidence before you question the investigation, is that so hard?

But “what’s the harm” from believing silly pseudoscience?

I gotta go punch something now.

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What a prick!
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3 thoughts on “What a prick!

  1. 2

    You never have to look very far for dumb stories about dumb people… to me reading the article is not so much about nonsense pseudoscience as it is people using it to their own ends to exonerate them of their crimes. Any science can be abused, not just the nonsensical kind.

  2. 3

    Here is an update for you Jason, it seems that she has not only gotten the original three freed, but is willing to help all those other poor victims whose ears have not had sex(or whatever magical way she can tell) to be free from prison. Here is a link to the article i just read, http://www.accessatlanta.com/celebrities-tv/virginity-test-helps-free-562733.html?cxntlid=thbz_hm

    Sorry for the long link,its late and I am tired. I just know that with Jason on his honeymoon, he would want to either see this or pass it along.

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