TMR's New Writer - JOSEPH NIGRO - On CAM

"I think the biggest victory scored by the promoters of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) was the name itself. Fifty years ago what passes today as CAM was snake oil, fraud, folk medicine, and quackery. The promoters of dubious health claims were charlatans, quacks, and con artists. Somehow they managed to pull off the greatest con of all - a culture change in which fraud became a legitimate alternative to scientific medicine, the line between science and pseudoscience was deliberate blurred, regulations designed to protect the public from quackery were weakened or eliminated, and it became politically incorrect to defend scientific standards in medicine.
 
Add to this a general anti-establishment movement beginning in the 1960s. CAM proponents were successful in portraying scientific medicine as the Establishment - something that needed to be taken down."

-- Steven Novella, close to pulling it in (but also close to dropping the rope) for the esteemed "skeptologists" on the Skepticblog.

The 1960’s anti-establish movement isn’t a side-car to the CAM mentality; it’s the tree from which CAM branches. And that tree is the contrarian, “gas lighting” mind game that is NewAge.

It is the ultimate temper tantrum, an immature control tactic and an “I’ll show you you’re not so smart” arrogance subliminally directed at disappointing parents, but acted out against anything where enough confusion and chaos can be generated to guarantee on-going, albeit dishonest, debate.
 
For some, the smug motive is to feel superior to those who actually had the fortitude to get educated in a difficult or demanding field, and mock them out of envy.

What bigger insult is there then to dismiss an achievement that took years and replace it with their own delusions, spit up while sitting in a circle of rocks in front of a blinking crystal.

Instant parity and accomplishment without exertion. An offshoot of the self-esteem movement.
 
Others are con artists and opportunists, who don’t believe anything in particular, but see a way to make a buck, elicit worship or obedience, get laid or flirt with fame. Without much disciplined effort, responsibility or daily chores.

It’s a free-wheeling life that claims the rewards of those who do the real work.

“You poor dummies that actually work to prove something” is an implied taunt.
 
The third head of this monster are the more regular people, including those who earned degrees in medicine and science and then turned scared or lazy, plodding away, grasping at anything to set themselves apart and create a little drama in their lives, dodging any notion that they are not the victims of their lives but the architects.

“The devil made me do it”, “The universe didn’t want me to”, “The stars weren’t aligned right”, “My palm reader said no”.

These are the folks pointed to by the intellectual crowd when dismissing NewAge as harmless.

Unfortunately, there are ex-spouses, warped children, shafted business partners and emptied bank accounts that beg differently.

These are the easy marks for the con artists.
 
 As the “down with The Man” culture dates back to the 1960’s, it should be no surprise that now, being older, they have infiltrated government agencies, medical communities and other fields, but haven’t matured a bit.

The baby has tied up the babysitter, and the baby is as determined as ever to replace organized thinking with the garbage they use to feed their own broken egos.
 
One ego-defense used by theses disordered fools is a root of Politically Correct.

It is a control tactic. “How dare you notice I’m wearing soiled underwear on my head”.

Now anything goes, and any notice or criticism is deflected by wide-spread anxiety about mentioning reality… it might upset somebody.

It is an insidious conditioning that promotes disorder as a virtue.
 
And why bother to develop any virtues and values when it’s easier and more fun to force others into pretending they have them, without any evidence (or more accurately, with evidence to the contrary).
 
The goal of NewAge/CAM is not to prove water has memory or any other such claim.

The goal is to jerk around the “Establishment”, to watch with glee as sincere people give some bizarre crud enough credibility to actually look into it, to keep the confusion alive and to hide behind it snickering.

“Look what I made them do”.

This is what happened to the Main Stream Media.
 
It’s a big, ugly tree, and it’s nothing more than a practical joke grown by cons.

They should be dismissed, brushed off with a laugh, told they’re stupid, and shown we’re not playing anymore.

Cultists Always Get Caught: Wikipedia Is Weird

"Disagreeable and closed to new ideas - that's the picture that emerges of contributors to community-curated encyclopaedia Wikipedia from a survey of their psychological attributes.

Led by Yair Amichai-Hamburger of the Sammy Ofer School of Communication in Herzliya, Israel, a team of psychologists surveyed 69 Israeli contributors to the popular online encyclopedia,...

...But to his surprise, although Wikipedia is founded on the notion of openly sharing and collecting knowledge as a community, they scored low on agreeableness and openness."

-- Peter Aldhous, who left out Wikipedia's, cultish leanings (and ties) and how these fundamentalist traits are found throughout the landscape of cultism, which hopefully doesn't include New Scientist.

Dude, They're Hatched (That's The Whole Plot)

ARE SUCKERS BORN OR MADE?

"Last night I was reading this piece and its related links about the rise of 'alternative medicine'..."

-- Will Femia, thinking he's, like, making me wonder or something, on MSNBC.

Who Said Anything About A "List of Grievances"?

"'Dialogue' is now defined as 'a conversation between equals, just so long as your equal is bound and gagged in a chair, and is forced to listen to your list of grievances'. Ahhhh....Liberal Fascism in full bloom. What a beautiful sight....and it is not even spring."

-- Charlie Foxtrot, interpreting The New York Times' latest attempt to define life under "liberal" rule - and I do mean "rule" - for (what else?) Charlie Foxtrot.

2009: Just Dumb Enough To Be Dangerous

Scientology Disgracefully Claims Another Life

I said that, as the upgrade is going on, I wasn't going to post unless something worth mentioning happened. Well, word is now getting around that John Travolta's son, Jett, has died - at the age of 16.

Why is that important? Because it's been said for years that Travolta's son had autism, and Travolta's a Scientologist, and as we all learned through Tom Cruise's antics, Scientology morons have a *little* problem with any mental disorder not created by L. Ron Hubbard. John Travolta reportedly couldn't even admit his kid had autism. Who knows if he ever got him any help?

The fact that cults are allowed to flourish in society, and cultish thinking is allowed to go unchallenged, is a crime - a crime of epic proportions - and, as far as TMR's concerned, the death of Jett Travolta is further evidence of that fact. No matter how many of these unwarranted deaths stack up, no one does or says anything significant about the cause. (How sick and compliant to an idea do you have to be to sacrifice your own child?) This is why I say we are in a time of NewAge Nazis: normal people just don't think and behave like this.

The death of Jett Travolta - a kid most Americans didn't even have the pleasure to know existed - is another shameful chapter in cult and Scientology history. And society at large deserves to be damned for it, as well as John Travolta, and you can bet TMR will:

Damn you all to hell.

Here Be Dragons: Clarifying Critical Thinking - To Overcome Superstition - In The Modern Era

I almost forgot about this video, but today I'm going back and trying to fill in some of the blanks on the blog - like attaching some of the thousands of articles I've collected to the titles of the posts (go on: click on the titles on this 1st page and see what you get) - it was by sifting through those old columns that I found this video again. It's a pretty good expose' of how critical thinking works, and why it tends to break down "magic" NewAge nonsense.

Anyway, if it seems like I'm not posting a lot today, don't be fooled: I'm hard at work in the background. And I might be busy for the next few days: I'm really enjoying attaching music to the posts, and getting rid of all this extra info I may never post on, because I'm too busy trying to stay current.

So now would be a good time to check out the posts of the past - there's almost 2, 700 here, kids - and they all need my attention, to be correctly formatted, in some way. And since I'm only one guy, I'm going to stick at it until I'm tired, or something. I'm really hating leaving the job undone.

And hey - don't forget: the red text indicates what I think is important information (like that link goes to Orac's list of hospitals with the wrong attitude). People seem to be missing the red link thing - and making links red is one of the biggest jobs I've got ahead of me - there's a lot of links in here!

O.K., that's all I've got to say right now. I'll still be posting when something demands it, but until then, stay "macho" until I get back:

Can We Be More Polite This Year? Fuck You!!!

I was just reading an article about a desire for more politeness this year when I found this Kathy Griffin New Years clip. And it wasn't a moment too soon, because anyone who reads this blog knows I'm a seething cauldron of unrepressed rage and there's no way, surrounded as I am by you NewAge Nazis, that that's going to stop until you guys get off the pot and repent.

Truth be told, it doesn't stop for any of you from being assholes, either; you just express it differently - read: hypocrisy - and, thus, try to hide it better. That doesn't mean you're not waaay more insulting (and/or meaner) than I am. You just make more of an effort at putting up a better front - even more layers of hypocrisy - like Kathy, here, saying what she really thinks once she believes the mic's off. I'm more like that description Richard Lester gave of John Lennon:

"I noticed this quality he had of standing outside every situation and noting the vulnerabilities of everyone, including myself."

So what pisses NewAgers and I, both, off is I can see through it all, and I react to their despicableness, and then they react to getting busted - again - and round and round we go. A mutual hatefest in the making.

We're, like, the world's most perfect example of synchronicity,....preparing for a Happy New Year.

Hat Tip: Wonkette

Ol' Black Water Keeps On Rollin' (Over People)

"Several years ago, a friend's religion killed her. No, she wasn't part of a mass suicide, or burned at the stake, or stoned to death. She was the victim of a deadly combination: breast cancer and the 'homeopathy religion.'

...The majority of Americans are raised in a religious home, where they are taught from an early age to accept faith, magical forces, impossible miracles, and anecdotal 'evidence' without question. These beliefs are directed at Yahweh and Jesus, but more importantly, children are taught to reject the evidence of their senses and the techniques of rational thought.

It's no surprise, then, that this same system of faith-based beliefs is easily transferred to other false claims. Homeopathy isn't very different from any religion."

-- Craig A. James, claimng another death by homeopathy, as The Religion Virus.

Boy, He Sure Looks A Lot Like The President-Elect!!! (Now Can We Stop Pretending There's Anything Special About Obama's Race Yet??)

Richard Craig McNew, 34, a former "Overachievers" traveling magazine salesman, pleaded guilty Tuesday to charges that he raped and killed 90-year-old Anna Elizabeth Vuori in her home three years ago, and is expected to be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Cult, Cults, Cultism, Cultish, Cultish Thinking: You'll Eventually Learn To Respect These Words

"Her cultish clinging to,...belief, against all scientific evidence,...cost her daughter her life in 2005 and, very likely, cost her her own life a few days ago,....

Leave it to HIV/AIDS denialist crank Celia Farber,..her claim is that Christina Maggiore did not die of AIDS. Rather,...a combination of stress and a "radical detoxification" regimen,...even if her account is accurate,...no matter what killed Maggiore, HIV or quackery, her case stands as a shining example that pseudoscience and antiscience kill."

-- Orac, on the self-imposed death lap taken by yet another cultish thinker, for Respectful Insolence.

Crazy Creeps Conspire To Con The Cancer Cats

"Any reasonable person looking at the many tests that have been conducted to test the weird claims made ever since Samuel Hahnemann came up with this idea back in 1792, would immediately see that the 'art' is simply imaginary,...it takes a totally delusional mind to still think that there's anything there to be found."

-- James Randi, saying homeopaths are "all deluded," on the JREF.

Richard Dawkins and Michael Baum: Homeopaths "Speak With Forked Tongues" And "It Makes You Weep" They Don't Have To Prove That It Works

"I'm obviously against alternative medicine, because to me, alternative, by definition, means it does not work. If it works, we would use it."

-- Michael Baum, Professor Emeritus of Surgery at the University College of London and a breast cancer specialist, in a new alternative medicine documentary with Professor Richard Dawkins, that focuses on homeopathy, for the Digital Journal.

Richard Dawkins,...switches to the main subject of the interview, homeopathy. He mentions that homeopathy uses ultra-diluted substances that are said to become more potent, the more they are diluted, and how -on the face of it- this sounds like plain bonkers. Yet, so many people swear by it on the basis of anecdotal evidence.

Prof. Baum reacts by stating that homeopathy is a system of beliefs into the nature of evidence and anecdotal evidence that is very hard to shift. What is meant by anecdotal evidence?

1. I have a problem
2. I did something
3. The problem went away
4. Therefore, what I did, works

This can be a powerful experience for the individual, and Baum says that a compassionate, caring medical practitioner must now ask the question if this could simply be the normal history of a self-limiting condition(1) that would have got better anyway or if it could be a placebo effect(2). And of course, it is also possible that this anecdote might hint that there is something active that might be worth exploring, for example, if there would be a lot of anecdotal evidence. However, an anecdote in and of itself is not evidence.

Michael Baum gives a nice example. If you would be standing in court to be judged for murder, you would probably prefer this evidence to be somewhat stronger than just anecdotal, circumstantial evidence. He goes on to say that we accept this for the judiciary and that his patients, who are often facing a life sentence (because of breast cancer) also deserve treatments for which the evidence is stronger than mere anecdotal, circumstantial evidence.

Richard Dawkins then asks how he would go about to test the validity of homeopathy. Baum says that the gold standard of testing is the randomized controlled trial. He explains that the homeopaths always advance two objections to that. First, he says, the homeopaths claim that their administrations cannot be patented and that they therefore do not have the money necessary to do these tests.

Baum says this is just not true. The homeopathic industry is hugely profitable and testing their remedies in controlled trials is simply not very expensive, one reason being that these remedies hardly cost anything. He says that a decent trial could be done for about 30,000 British pounds a year and that this is cheap, especially for an industry that makes millions. He goes on saying that he actually advised the Blackie Foundation at the Royal Homeopathic Hospital on how to design and conduct these trials. They refused.



The other argument homeopaths are always advancing is that they individualise their treatments and that therefore, clinical trials are not appropriate for testing their treatments. Baum says that this is a very poor argument, and he gives two reasons. When one buys a homeopathic remedy over the counter, it is not individualized. One asks for a remedy, say for a cold, and goes away with an off-the-shelf product, so there simply is no individualization. "So, "he says, "they speak with forked tongues." The second reason he advances is that modern testing methodology is perfectly able to accommodate for individualized treatments, and he gives an example on how to organize a four-armed trial.

Professor Baum also explains that he is quite upset with the way that alternologists hijack perfectly good words of the English language and pervert them into meanings they do not have. He gives the example of "holistic," and says that alternologists have debased this word by hijacking it without knowing what it means and that while they think that it means "whole" but that, in fact, holism is about the hierarchical organization of the human subject up to and beyond the family unit where at each level the sum is greater than the parts.

Prof. Dawkins and Baum also talk about the wisdom of allocating NHS (the UK National Health Service) money to homeopathy. Baum says that this is currently a minor problem, but that there is a fundamental principle at stake, namely that now, in the UK, there are two standards for medical products. Proper pharmaceuticals are to be tested rigorously and must show their efficacy, while homeopathic products do not have to show that they are effective. "It makes you weep," says professor Baum.

Later on, they talk about what Baum politely calls "post-modern relativism," the idea that everything is but an opinion. I have an opinion, but you have read some other books and you have therefore another opinion and both opinions are equally valid. As a result, we have now alternative medicine, alternative teaching methods, alternative legal advocates, "but," he says "we haven't yet come up with an alternative Boeing 747 pilot".

He links this to the MMR vaccine crisis where people are being told by alternologists and are convinced that there is a conspiracy of the medical establishment and the government that, in order to protect themselves, they were willing to sacrifice countless children to autism. "This is simply a lie," he says, and he adds that even among his closest friends, there are people who are not immunizing their children and that these children are now unprotected as a result.

Baum goes on giving another example of young women backpacking around the world who are taking homeopathic anti-malarials and as a result, are coming back to the UK with malaria.