"Firstly, if people employ homeopathy to protect themselves from infectious diseases like malaria, typhus, TB, AIDS etc., or if people believe those charlatans who promote it as an effective cure for life-threatening conditions, we do have a serious public health issue at hand. Secondly, why should the vast majority of health care professionals bend over backwards to do their very best implementing the concepts of [Evidence Based Medicine], if homeopathy is being given a free ride to continue existing in a virtual universe of belief-based medicine? Thirdly, how on earth can scientists possibly explain 'the science of genetics and how it develops, or the issue to do with climate change', if they lack the skill, courage, power or honesty to adequately respond to harmful quackery masquerading as medicine?"
Cruz’s acknowledgement of the near-impossibility of passing a defunding bill through the Democratic-controlled Senate is an accurate reading of political reality. But House Republicans didn’t care; they were apoplectic with Cruz not only for laying the responsibility for defunding on them, but for making them seem weak. “If Cruz doesn’t help us in the Senate to pass a defunding bill, we’ll end up having to pass a normal CR,” complains a veteran House Republican. “It’ll be pathetic, but I expect him to slam us for it.”
House insiders say a handful of House Republicans cursed Cruz in the cloakroom on Wednesday, and a leadership source says angry e-mails were exchanged among GOP staffers who consider Cruz to be a charlatan. “Cruz keeps raising conservatives’ hopes, and then, when we give him what he wants, he doesn’t have a plan to follow through,” an aide fumes. “He’s an amateur.” Another aide says, “Nancy Pelosi is more well-liked around here.”
Benevolence requires a strong sense of justice because a sense of justice is necessary to appreciate dishonesty: after all, in games of trust, especially with lag time, cheaters can wreak havoc. And so, over evolutionary time, an arms race honed in social mammals a growing intelligence. Trivers finds it ironic that “dishonesty has often been the file against which intellectual tools for truth have been sharpened.” But one of the outcomes of this Darwinian dynamic may have also been a genuine instinct for fairness, born of the need to distinguish trustworthy partners from charlatans.
Most Americans do not think Scientology is a true religion, more people would prefer to win an Olympic gold medal than a Pulitzer prize and celebrity endorsements do not carry much weight, according to a new poll released on Monday.
HARRIS: Have you looked at the Narconon literature on what Narconon contends the benefits from the sauna program are?
CASAL: Yes, I have.
HARRIS: And the sauna program, what Narconon contends is that in -- it in fact detoxifies your body. True?
CASAL: True.
HARRIS: But there's no scientific basis that you can point me to to support that contention, is there, sir?
CASAL: You're correct.
HARRIS: So when Narconon states that the sauna program detoxifies its students, you're not aware, as a medical doctor, of any scientific basis for that contention?
CASAL: I agree.
HARRIS: The vitamin regimen. You're familiar with the vitamin regimen?
CASAL: Yes, sir.
HARRIS: What -- do you have an opinion about whether or not the vitamin regimen is effective at treating addiction?
CASAL: I believe that it has very likely no bearing whatsoever on the treatment of addiction.
In the five years since the book was published in German, moreover, a great deal of research has appeared about Berlin during this period, so that the book was out of date even before it was translated. Friedrich was a long-term museum curator in the city, not a professional historian, and while he was effective at presenting well-known facts to a wider audience, this book demonstrates, regrettably, that he did not really know to do original or innovative historical research. Given the highly critical reception the book received on its publication in Germany in 2007, it is puzzling that Yale University Press thought it was worth bringing out in English at all.Indeed. Like a lot of things that are happening now - including the current election of a Mormon cultist to high political office, though his belief system is as much of a fraud, and his grasp on science and reality is hardly any better, than the Scientologists - it makes me wonder two things more than any other:
