Last night the ABC TV show The 7:30 Report ran a piece on the Natural Medicine fallacy. In a nutshell, the fallacy is that because something is natural, it is good. There are many things wrong with this claim, but before I get in to them and the dangers of natural/herbal medicine, take a few moments to watch the video yourself.
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25/02/2010
The Natural Medicine fallacy.
Posted by Bastard Sheep under Skepticism | Tags: Alternative Medicine, Fallacy, Herbal Medicine, Natural Medicine |Leave a Comment
23/02/2010
Scientology exposition.
Posted by Bastard Sheep under Atheism | Tags: Scientology, Today Tonight |Leave a Comment
The cult of scientology just can’t get a break, and to be honest it doesn’t deserve one. They’ve been lampooned and exposed on South Park, received a lot of publicity for people they’ve directly or indirectly killed, had tom cruise make an arse of himself, had the online circlejerk known as anonymous go after it, and we’re losing count of the number of people who have managed to escape to tell their tale.
Yet somehow despite all the bad publicity, they still somehow manage to grow. Apparently the cult are on the verge of another surge here in Australia.
The current affairs show Today Tonight decided to follow up on their numerous stories on the cult of scientology, and managed to get an interview with one of their upper cult members as well as a tour of their Californian offices. The videos are after the jump. (more…)
23/02/2010
Homeopathy: useless and unethical.
Posted by Bastard Sheep under Skepticism | Tags: Homeopathy, Podblack, Ten23 |Leave a Comment
Something that those of us who took part in the global Ten23 campaign already knew has now become official: Homeopathy has been declared useless and unethical.
The Science and Technology Select Committee in the UK has delivered its verdict on homeopathy, calling for the withdrawal of NHS funding and official licensing for homeopaths.
For those who do not know what Homeopathy is, there’s a few good quick summaries here and here.
Podblack also has a VERY impressive collection of news stories and blog posts on this story, I highly recommend checking out her blog to see what other bloggers who have had more time than myself have to say on the subject.
21/02/2010
Rom Houben wasn’t communicating after all.
Posted by Bastard Sheep under Skepticism | Tags: Facilitated Communication, Rom Houben, Young Australian Skeptics |Leave a Comment
Three months ago I wrote a blog post both here and at Young Australian Skeptics about the case of Rom Houben, a man who was left in a vegetative state after a car crash. Some uncouth attention seekers decided to abuse this man, his family, and their dignity for their own 15 minutes of fame by claiming he could communicate with the outside world. They used a common scam trick known as Facilitated Communication, and the media fell for it hook line and sinker.
Three months later it appears they have FINALLY run some very very basic tests. The results are just as expected by the skeptical community – it wasn’t Rom communicating after all, it was all the work of the facilitator. Of course, barely any media companies are covering this and letting the public know, so most people will continue to believe it was true. (more…)
21/02/2010
Christopher Maloney is a quack.
Posted by Bastard Sheep under Skepticism | Tags: Andreas Moritz, Christopher Maloney, Naturopathy, Pharyngula, Quack, Streisand Effect |[4] Comments
Christopher Maloney is a quack. It’s that simple really. He’s an N.D. (Naturopathic Doctor / Not a Doctor) from Maine who doesn’t seem to understand the concept behind the Streisand Effect.
What happened is a student dared to criticise him on his blog and referred to Christopher Maloney as being a quack. Rather than ignore it as most people would do, or dispute it in the comments as many others would do, Christopher Maloney and his friend Andreas Moritz (a cancer quack) instead went to wordpress (the hosts of this blog) and threatened them with legal action if they didn’t completely shut down the blog in question. (more…)
28/01/2010
Another apple release, another lovers vs haters battle.
Posted by Bastard Sheep under IT | Tags: Apple, Fanboy, Linux, Microsoft, Srsly |[4] Comments
The cult of mac have released another product today, and as expected the news sites are filled with information about it as though it’s the only thing that has happened in the past month. It’s amazing how Apple seem to be the only tech company who can drum up the attention normally reserved for celebrities and drama queens. Even massacres and natural disasters struggle at times.
Along with all the media attention, the public has also gone in to a frenzy. Once again tied between the fanboys who think it’s the greatest thing since the last Apple release/the previous Apple release/the previous Apple release/rinse, repeat/sliced bread, and the Apple haters who like to counter the rabid Apple fans with equally rabid opposition.
What neither side seems to understand is that Apple products, like just about all products (IT and non-IT) have their place. They all have their purpose. When the MacBook Air came out we had the same thing, many people saying it was too limited, others saying it suited them perfectly. I’m in the camp of it being too limited for me, but just because it doesn’t suit me doesn’t mean I should be running around all but trolling those to whom it does suit. (more…)
10/12/2009
Kent Hovind is a friend of mine.
Posted by Bastard Sheep under Atheism | Tags: Kent Hovind, Wikileaks |1 Comment
(post title taken from here). Kent Hovind has found a way to get back in to the public’s attention again, and as always it isn’t for a good reason. If he isn’t making a laughing stock of himself, it seems he’s making a laughing stock of himse … wait. Ok, so maybe there’s only one thing he’s good at.
If you don’t know who he is, he is most famous for being a bible literalist and young earth creationist. He’s a self proclaimed doctor through an unaccredited “university” (read: diploma mill) as well as a self proclaimed science teacher (though his employment history does not reflect this).
His doctorial dissertation has been kept exceedingly secret. This is odd as the standard practise for universities globally is to make such dissertations publicly available. Both he and his “university” has consistently refused to allow it to be made public despite numerous requests for reprints or scholarly inquiry. That is until now.
The fine folk over at WikiLeaks.Org have managed to get their hands on it. The popularity of wikileaks though means this file is extremely slow to download. Despite coming in at a mere 2.1MB it still took me close to an hour to download it, so I have decided to mirror it here and here. (more…)
25/11/2009
NSW schools to get ethics as an alternative to religion.
Posted by Bastard Sheep under Atheism | Tags: Ethics, Humanism, Religion |1 Comment
Right now, public schools across Australia generally have religious education classes. Thanks to the high involvement and lack of seperation between church and state in this country, generally if someone does not wish their kid to be indoctrinated in these classes, the childs only option is to sit out and do, well, nothing.
The Humanist Society of Victoria have been pushing for a number of years to have an alternative so that kids who sit out of these classes have something productive to do other than sit in a small room with no books and nothing to do but twiddle their thumbs. This has always been rejected by the religious right and their influences though as it may give these kids an upper hand, allowing them an opportunity to get educated in something the other kids cannot. They fail every time to see the irony here, they are essentially saying their own course on religion is useless and does not contribute to ones education.
What the Humanist Society of Victoria have been pushing for the strongest, is an ethics class as an alternative. More irony to the religious right, they are essentially saying the kids who attend religion class won’t learn about ethics. A quick look at the bible seems to confirm this.
After that very long introduction though, I am finally getting to my point. It would appear the NSW government has beaten Victoria to the punch. Out of almost nowhere, the NSW Premier Nathan Reese has announced today that schools across the state of NSW will be getting ethics classes as an alternative to religion. (more…)
25/11/2009
When care givers go bad.
Posted by Bastard Sheep under Skepticism | Tags: Facilitated Communication, Rom Houben, Young Australian Skeptics |[3] Comments
(This was also posted at YoungAusSkeptics.com)
The news sites are going crazy right now about a Belgian man called Rom Houben who has spent the last 23 years in a coma. His facilitators are now claiming he was not in a coma at all, but rather that he was just trapped concious inside is body unable to get out and communicate with the outside world.
The skeptic sites are going crazy as well about this story, but not for the same reason. Watch the video below and see if you can pick the reason why.
25/11/2009
Redefinition of words.
Posted by Bastard Sheep under Atheism | Tags: Agnostic, Atheist, Gnostic, Theist, Young Australian Skeptics |Leave a Comment
(This was also posted at YoungAusSkeptics.com)
One of the great things about the way language evolves is that words change their meaning all the time. The main reason this happens is due to the way in which we generally learn words. How many of you upon hearing a new word actually go to the effort to pick up a dictionary or go to an online one and look up the words meaning? I am sure a few of you do, but the majority of people (myself included) don’t.
Instead we look at the context the word was used in, the sentence it is in and those surrounding, and from there we use our intuition and past experience to decide our own definition of the word. If we get it wrong, we continue to get it wrong until such a time as we are corrected. We may easily decide to start using that word, incorrectly of course, in our conversations with others. They then pick up on this incorrect meaning and maybe even apply their own meaning to it which is different again. As the word spreads and is picked up, the meaning changes. Dictionaries have in the past and continue today to change the official meaning of a word based upon common usage. (more…)
