General thread on pseudoscience and quack medicine

Good, bad, biased, paid or what-have-you. There's an endless supply.
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ericbarbour
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General thread on pseudoscience and quack medicine

Post by ericbarbour » Thu Jan 18, 2018 2:21 am

From a private email exchange, where a friend brought up law blogger Jonathan Turley's increasing libertarianism:
> https://jonathanturley.org/2018/01/17/m ... in-canada/
> The four most important words are "Every one who fraudulently". The law criminalizes "psychic" fraud, something that happens every day. There has been legal wrangling over the legitimacy of such laws, over-broad wording, etc. but the basic idea makes sense to me.

Unfortunately it's like attempts to outlaw quack medical practices; how do lawmakers even define "quackery"? Prohibition of something people really want always fails. We are going thru that over cannabis, eventually it will be legal (and stay legal) whether it has valid medical uses or not. Tobacco has been PROVEN to be harmful and of limited use as a medicine, but it's still legal to sell.

Good luck outlawing all the assorted alternative medicine practitioners. And convincing their millions of supporters to stop giving them $$$.

That business is massive now -- thanks to aging baby boomers with their aches and pains. Acupuncture and Reiki and Ayurveda and homeopathy etc. etc. are all enjoying a "renaissance" in the US because there are 70 million boomers, generally arrogant children over 60 who go on their "feelings" and not facts. It's why major drugstore chains are now carrying homeopathic "drugs" and magnetic bracelets. They wouldn't do it if it weren't incredibly lucrative. Go and ask the FDA why they tolerate CVS and Walgreens selling costly homeopathic crap.

Don't ask about how Wikipedia mishandles this. It's really disgusting. I'm still convinced the insiders leave those articles wide open for editing by supporters because they get sick thrills from harassing and banning cranks generally. The result is not "quality content" but then they don't give a rat's ass about the content anyway--it's FUN to fight with crazy people.

Guess I'll post this on the WS forum, just to be "complete". Not that it matters.

Look at the history of the Acupuncture article for a nice example. Editwarred constantly since 2004. There's that legendary asshole Guy Chapman, screeching. "Our Valued Expert".

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