by Grania
This is a poster from 2012 that is doing the rounds on Facebook again, and I hadn’t seen it before so I am glad it’s resurfaced.
It has several familiar faces, who sadly still ply their trade in bamboozling the credulous and the desperate for profit and fame, although Burzynski’s career is is perhaps under threat at last. Maybe.
Click through here to see the original.
The last panel gives a perfect opportunity to repost Tim Minchin’s funny and clever beat-poem, Storm.
although, I prefer the original version here.
It’s also a good time to give a shout out to the people at Sense About Science who have created an online resource about various claims and whether they stand up to scientific inquiry.
“If somebody says that you can have a direct effect on quantum physics, it’s probably Chopra.”
That, or an actual quantum physicist getting all excited about diffraction gratings and electrostatically levitating oil drops and particle accelerators and….
b&
This is marvelous!
And, it provides an opportunity to refer to another great anti-woo presentation, Crispian Jago’s Venn Diagram of Irrational Nonsense.
Reblogged this on Mark Solock Blog.
Reblogged this on My WordPress Notepad.
Thanks for posting this.
I’ve often pointed out the similarity between atheism and science-based medicine in the fight against irrationality. The other side of each uses very similar tactics, apologetics, tropes, and intuitions. Personal experience is the gold standard. You need to have faith and believe. We were meant for better things because reality cares about us. The world is conspiring to instantiate Evil over Good.
Belief in alternative medicine and belief in God are signs that one is open-minded and has hope. Their truth shows us that materialists are wrong. Both theism and alt med give Mind primacy over lowly matter.
“Accomodationists” and “shruggies” are essentially playing by the same book (“what’s the harm/ let the Little People believe/live and let live/as long as it doesn’t interfere with science or anything.”)And a lot of quacks are getting by with falsified claims because they’re riding on the bandwagon of Respect for Deeply Held Spiritual Beliefs. Even if you don’t believe/use the stuff, don’t be so rude as to force your views on others who think they’re being helped.
The video is very good as well as the music at the finish.
love the Tim Minchin!!
A slightly related comic that I like is this:
<a rel="nofollow" href="http://xkcd.com/808/"
How about
Well,for some reason I can’t get the HTML link to work. Just go to http://xkcd.com/808/
🌀
The entry (ahemm) under “Natural” just cried out for an invocation of Rule 34.
Never having encountered Poison Ivy, I don’t really know how horrifying a prospect this is. For “horrifying”, substitute “entertaining”, as appropriate. I did once make the mistake of not checking for stinging nettles before squatting, which wasn’t exactly a fun experience. But on the other had, the Romans Rule-34’d that one and it has remained a reasonably popular topic since.
I get the sentiment, but at least one of these goes too far.
Take the ‘Toxins’ square: “Imaginary substances invoked to sell a product.”
They should have stopped there, because the next sentence–“The liver removes any real toxins from your body just fine”–is of a type of insidious propaganda as the snake oil it’s trying to warn you against. First, the liver does not metabolize all toxins/chemicals equally efficiently (see chrysene vs. Benzo[a]pyrene). Second, even if it does, it’s well known that metabolites can sometimes be more toxic than the parent compound (eg, methanol->formaldehyde). Also a byproduct of metabolic activity is reactive oxygen species which can lead to cytotoxicity.
Oh Grania, that all too common mistake…
“although, I prefer the original version”
– Well which is it, the original or a version ?! The first is the original, all others are versions of it, it can’t be original ‘and'(italics, how can I do it here ?) a version !