I guess it doesn’t work, then?

I’m developing a theory (which has probably already been developed by someone else) that the more desperate and likely to be fatal the disease, the more likely it is to attract quack “solutions”. (A notable exception is the generally non-fatal condition of being considered overweight, which is associated with a truly amazing amount of quackery.) It’s not a great theory, but it makes me feel somewhat smarter. Anyhoooo….

Hulda Clark, author of The Cure for All Cancers and The Cure for Advanced Cancers, has died of—you guessed it—cancer.

If her “cure” couldn’t help her, how many of the sick folks who bought her books have died? And how many of those died because they put off possibly helpful medical care to try the quackery?

Read more at Respectful Insolence.

Would punk have worked better?

Finally! Someone is going to have to suffer for those annoying Baby Einstein videos. And it’s not the babies anymore.

Seems that Disney and Brainy Baby are offering rebates to anyone and everyone who bought Baby Einstein videos. They’d already been forced to remove claims about the videos being “educational” and helping babies develop into geniuses.

Sure, the DVDs probably make decent babysitters, but they make even better coasters!

Read the article from the New York Times.

Be very afraid of people like this.

Because I’ve been asked, I’m posting this video. This is a homeopath trying to explain the physics behind homepathy.

Most of the science blogs I follow have been running surveys about how long their readers can stand the video before they are forced to turn it off because their heads start to hurt from the stupid. I made it about a minute thirty-five before I had to take a break.

You’ve been warned.

Read a fun reaction at Respectful Insolence.