Massage is an area of healthcare that is replete with pseudoscience. There are many legitimate practitioners, but the consumer needs to be careful when seeking a massage therapist
Recently, I attempted such a search to treat shoulder aches from many hours spent at my desk. I’ve been feeling like those evolution spoofs posters showing hunched over primates evolving into homo sapiens hunched over a computer.
I am in love with a conspiracy theorist. While this is a revelation for me, evidently I have for some time. While I hesitate to define my partner by the few irrational beliefs that she holds, the statement rings true.
I began dating my partner; let’s just call her Jessica, while I was still in high school, long before I became active in the skeptical community. When I did become more skeptically active (blogging, reading, advocating, etc.), a mere two years ago, I realized that many of the controversial topics that we would discuss in passing had slants to them that were recognizable to me. I had heard their fallacies and discrepancies from my inflow of skeptical media (when I was just starting out, mainly The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe podcast). While this generated the occasional fight between the two of us, nothing really ever came of it save an eyebrow raise from me.
In this video from 2008, Australian skeptic, podcaster, author, TV personality, and professional origamist Richard Saunders talks at The Amaz!ng Meeting 6 about the origami Pigasus and dowsing as a model for teaching critical thinking to students. Videos from The Amaz!ng Meeting are provided free of charge on Randi.org and the JREF's YouTube channel.
Here is a recap of the stories that appeared last week at Science-Based Medicine, a multi-author skeptical blog that separates the science from the woo in medicine.
Recently in the comments to a post on Science-Based Medicine we have been having a discussion about the nature of expertise. The post was superficially about tonsillectomy, but really about the relationship between the role of the physician as a medical expert and the role of the health care consumer in being well-informed.
The article was a criticism of a post written by Seth Roberts in which he argued that patients should do their own research (meaning review of published research) and not rely upon the medical establishment, who is biased, self-serving, and ignorant of basic science (according to Roberts).
