A new study by Jeremy Snyder and Tim Caulfield shows how much money is raised by GoFundMe and other crowdfunding sources to support quackery. It’s a lot of money, which is unsurprising to Orac, given that he’s been writing about how crowdfunding is “baked into” the business model of cancer quacks since he discovered Stanislaw Burzynski a decade ago.
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There’s a whole genre of quack apologia for traditional Chinese medicine that I like to call “traditional Chinese medicine is science, ma-an!” Basically, it tries to convince you that the prescientific, mystical, vitalistic mass of nonsense that is traditional Chinese medicine is “ancient knowledge” that was far ahead of its time and that its wisdom will be rediscovered to become the future of medicine. It’s utter nonsense, of course. Unfortunately, in its January issue, National Geographic fell for this myth—hard.
“Functional medicine” preaches the “biochemical individuality” of each patient, which is why one of its key features is that its practitioners order reams of useless lab tests and then try to correct every abnormal level without considering (or even knowing) what these abnormalities mean, if anything. So they make up fake diagnoses and profit.
Oscillococcinum, a homeopathic remedy sold by Boiron, consists of a gruel of duck liver and heart diluted away to nonexistence. Nevertheless, recently a California court recently affirmed a jury verdict in a consumer class action deceptive advertising case in favor of Boiron Inc. and Boiron USA. This is why laws, courts, and juries do not decide science. Unfortunately, they do decide science policy.
In the days before Orac left the blog in order to rest and recharge his Tarial cell, he got into a little…”discussion”… on Twitter with a naturopath named Paul Theriault. It did not go well…for Not-a-Doctor Theriault. Be careful what you wish for, naturopaths, when you encounter Orac. You might get it.
