Tag: pseudoscience
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Fooled by Pseudoscience: A Philosophy of Science
The “huge quantities of data” collected on the subject show that the principal reason people are deceived by pseudoscientific claims and alternative therapies is not intellectual ability, but personal experience: a bad personal experience with mainstream medicine is the overwhelming reason, regardless of medical training. That’s from Ben Goldacre in an interview for The Philosophers’ Magazine…
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The Evidence For (and Against) Health Supplements: a Visualisation
After collating the results of over 1,500 studies and meta-studies (only “large, human, randomized placebo-controlled trials” were included), Information is Beautiful’s David McCandless collaborated with Andy Perkins to produce a comprehensive data visualisation mapping the the effectiveness (or not) of a wide range of health supplements (there’s a static image and interactive Flash version available).…
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The Efficacy of Hand Sanitizers
Given their prevalence in offices, hospitals and pharmacies (how naïve?), I would have thought the effectiveness of hand sanitizers would have been a lot greater than it is: In 2005, Boston-based doctors published the very first clinical trial of alcohol-based hand sanitizers in homes and enrolled about 300 families with young children in day care. For…
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The Anti-Vaccine Movement and the Rejection of Science
Already covered to death, it’s been on my bookmarks list since I read the following from Wired editor Mark Horowitz on it’s day of publication: Best/worst day. Story I am proudest of assigning and editing at Wired goes live today. […] But I also lose job. Bummer! That story is a fantastically well written and researched article…
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Suing in the Name of God
Soon it’s going to be illegal to see into the future; contact the deceased; and find out what’s inside closed envelopes. Well, probably… New laws are about to criminalise clairvoyants who fail to note on their advertisements that their services ‘are not subject to scientific proof’. Obviously, I’d like to think that the more intelligent…