I was pleasantly surprised to see that a new article on naturopathy in Consumer Reports largely resists the temptation to engage in false balance. While it doesn’t come right out and say you shouldn’t waste your money, the article, by Consumer Reports’ Lead Investigative Health Reporter Jeneen Interlandi, is pretty damning.
I’m resorting to name-calling, and I don’t even know who I’m talking about.
Retraction Watch carries the story of a peer reviewer who published a paper he or she reviewed as his or her own. Stole the paper, in other words:
…after Michael Dansinger of Tufts Medical Center realized a paper he’d submitted to Annals of Internal Medicine that had been rejected was republished, and the journal recognized one of the reviewers among the list of co-authors, it published a letter from Dansinger to the reviewer, along with an editorial explaining what happened.
Being on Andrew Weil’s mailing list is entertaining (see “Journey into bullshit“). His latest mailing advertises his upcoming webinar with Deepak Chopra. The website for this event (on chopra.com) starts off
Are Your Genes Your Destiny?
Until very recently, scientists would have said yes.
In fact, it was widely accepted that the genes we inherited at birth controlled everything – from our personalities to our health to our longevity. So if you were unlucky enough to inherit the gene for cancer or heart disease, you were expected – no matter who you were or how you lived – to develop that disease.
The Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine is an embarrassment. Its director, Dr. Andrew Weil, is a quack.
Let me get this out of the way first: I know Dr. Weil gives a lot of good advice. He also advises a lot of nonsense. A doctor who advises his patients to get their chakras aligned is a quack. A doctor who advises his patients to eat a healthy diet, get more exercise, quit smoking, and get their chakras aligned is still a quack.