A very special place for all the worst comments I get on my blog.
I’ve decided to stop censoring comments. I think it is a terrible thing to do and have only had to censor a handful of comments in the lifespan of this blog. But, starting from today I will be showcasing the worst comments, instead of covering them up. I just feel better about it this way.
Please feel free to express your opinion about these comments.
Number 1: Skeptics caused the Inquisition by Patrizia Mariani
The first entry in the hall of shame is by someone called Patrizia who earns this esteemed position for stating outright that skeptics caused the Inquisition, the Holocaust, and other horrendous things. She is factually incorrect and excruciatingly ignorant both of the position of scientific skeptics and the terrible acts she blames us for.
Number 2: Ignorance by Ronny Finch
It has been a long time since Patrizia fired the first salvo in the Battle of the Braindead that is the Skepticdetective Hall of Shame. But today I have a brand new piece of dumb-assery to load onto this page (yay!).
I received this email last night:
On 18 July 2012 01:21, Ronny Finch <ronfinch87@yahoo.com> wrote:
I don’t see why you have to prove that everything is wrong with everything. Have you ever conducted your own experiments about memory water? im guessing no….you seem like an ignorant little child who has to make sure that everything is wrong. I’m sure your being paid by some pharmaceutical or corporate giant to disprove that anything all natural, organic or homeopathic is a scheme. You are truly misguided, ill will pray for you and hope you choose a better way to spend your time other than trying to disprove inexpensive remedies or cures that work.
Well done Ronny! You earn a place in this list because your email is yet another repetition of the baseless accusations that skeptics and critical thinkers receive all the time. You couldn’t even come up with an original insult.
I don’t have to do my own experiments to know that water memory is bullshit – if that was how science worked we’d all still be carving our own wheels.
I’d love it if Big Pharma could send me my cheque… Any day now, I’m sure it’s in the post.
I don’t think that anything all-natural or organic is a scheme. But I do know that homeopathy is not medicine. The scientific establishment has tested it and shown it to be no better than placebo. It wouldn’t be, because there’s nothing in it.
Have a lovely day, Ronny Finch.
Number 3: Skepicism by Rick
I love this “you’re not a true skeptic if you don’t believe stupid bullshit” argument by Rick:
One can have a skeptical attitude and still believe in God (I find it offensive, but more importantly, I am sad for you, that you defame His good name by calling Him ‘That Wizard in the Sky’: may you turn around your mind before you meet your Maker) In fact, I am a Christian because I am skeptical: I am skeptical about a lot of absurd things these days and that is including the most absurd, evidence-defecient, and multi-flawed theory of them all: Evolution. Half the scientists do not believe in this theory; the rest, who believe, are split in half as to the controlling agency for Evolution. Anyone who says something like this is, to my mind, not a totally consistent and honest skeptic and shouldn’t be listened too. In short, I am skeptical about you.
Can we get one thing straight? Rick is wrong. OK? There is a metric fuck-ton of evidence for evolution. It has flaws, like every theory, but not nearly as many as intelligent design or creation.
Which half of ‘the scientists’ don’t believe it Rick? The half you made up?
What a dumb-shit thing to say.
Number 4: Illuminati Conspiracy!
The shattering stupidity of this comment, by Alan, speaks for itself:
Clean your liver and you can drop your allergies over a couple of weekends. Sulfite is a poison and so is GMO. GMO shuts down your organs and slowly kills you…Stress is caused by a toxic acidic body that is mal-nourished.
This Blogger I suspect works for the Illuminati and is promoting the interests of toxic terrorism in food, water, air. This Blogger is quick to shrug off Conspiracies which lurk in every isle of a grocery store (proof). Organic food has close to 1000% more nutrients in them when you look at the cross-section of each element of source of nutrition that makes up the fruit or vegetable. Example Spinach has 1000% more Iron in it than non-organic Spinach. GMO is mal-nutrition on steroids
First of all, the liver doesn’t cause allergies by being unclean. If it did, my newborn son wouldn’t have been born with a milk allergy. Your liver is very good at cleaning itself, a fact the detox industry does not want you to know.
Thanks for pointing out my Illuminati affiliations Alan, I was wondering where all the extra money was coming from. Now that you’ve made it clear to me, it all makes sense.
Alan’s whole thing about organic food having more nutrients is pure, free-range bullshit. As far as I am aware, ever such claim made by organic food proponents has been proven to be false. He clearly has no idea what Genetic Modification actually is.
Well done, you poorly-informed-conspiracy-promoting-GM-ignorant dumbass, you have won a place in the Hall of Shame.
Angela, this Dave fella is trying to escape the debate in a well-known trick of the alarmist school – blame your stance on being in the pay of Big Oil, Big Pharm, Big Biz, Big this that and the next. I quote from James Delingpole’s book “Watermelons” (a must read for anyone with a thinking mind and perception beyond the ‘watermelon skin’!)
“What we see being employed here, in fact, is a classic technique beloved by left-liberals, greenies, and greenie liberal-lefties alike. It’s known as ‘closing down the argument’. Rather than engage their opponent in a debate they probably cannot win, they instead duck the issue by impugning their opponent’s motives. The technique says; “This right-wing person in the pay of Big Oil is so unspeakably vile that his despicable views cannot be taken seriously.”
Hi Robin, I think you nailed it. That’s why I asked him to provide specific examples of where he thinks I am presenting misinformation.
I don’t expect to hear from him again.
I’m just curious Angela. How much do you get paid by big business to give half truths, and outright lies? Or is it that you are just a drama queen who loves to live on mis-information?
From a healers standpoint, it is quite clear that cleansing the liver can help reduce and eliminate the majority of America’s health issues. But obviously, you have no clue what health is. I do. I had to get rid of severe arthritis, cancer, diabetes, and years of migraines on myself.
If you are not willing to listen to you body, you are not willing to heal. I feel sorry for you, because you are promoting yourself as a fool online, since you lack obvious practical experience in slamming those who know what works. Just as you do with people like Morry Zelcovitch. How would you know it’s a scam, since you’ve never tried it?
I have done things many Americans would believe is preposterous, simply because they’ve grown up brainwashed, to believe certain things are not possible. Just as you obviously do. That, or you’re being paid to slam others. No way will I give you my website. I give truthful information only. You’re just another quack, just like Stephen Barrett, who runs 26 sites all slamming health professionals as frauds, when in fact, most, if not all, are true, legitimate helpers of the public. He is paid by the drug cartel. Who are you paid by? Just curious
I won’t tell you what I’ve done that would seem impossible, because there’s no point in having someone lying to the world about me. Lie all you wish. All things come full circle.
Do yourself a favor. Be honest. Is this too much to ask?
I’m not getting paid by anyone Dave, and I have repeatedly refused requests to host advertising on this site because I don’t want to have any conflict of interest.
As for the rest of your comment, I’m not lying, I’m not in cahoots with a drug cartel or any one. I am simply a skeptical person trying to prevent other people from being taken advantage of.
If you can’t appreciate that, then you are the one with a hidden agenda.
If you can point out an example of a lie, I will be happy to correct it.
Unfortunately the bodies of skeptics and independent thinkers have filled mass graves,dungeons and gas chambers as adequately as anyone else who didn’t deserve to be there. People who resist blind faith and reject dogma have always been a target for fascist institutions. The Nazis and the Inquisition held their beliefs above question and crushed those who wouldn’t play the game. Science and medicine arrive at their conclusions through experimentation and observation,their opinions are provisional subject to new information. People who burn books are not scholars, they are politicians and ignorance is their ally.
Only a moron could honestly believe that homeopathy works
“I don’t have to do my own experiments to know that water memory is bullshit – if that was how science worked we’d all still be carving our own wheels.”
Interesting. So, you just take the words of so an so science journals, and promote them here. Nothing wrong with it, but, considering the quite simple nature of the experiment, in this particular case, you could do it! I mean, you could find it out for yourself!
In any case, I am sure you know that there are so many instances in the history of science when scientific discoveries were dismissed by prestigious scientist, just because they felt uncomfortable with them. Example? Albert Einstein dismissed the Quantum Theory – in his own words, he could not believe that God throws dice…
My point: water memory may as well be a false theory. Or it may be true. YOU do not know. You only assume. Until that time you actually start experimenting with it, the only thing you do is repeating what others have said before you.
Food for thought: do you know how the Egyptian pyramids were built? Or why?
It seems that someone named Andy doesn’t know how Science works. Science is incremental and it builds on each brick by each brick. There are no facts in science, only observations that can run models to predict outcomes. People deny that a scientific theory accurately predicts an outcome all the time. But if that theory accurately predicts that outcome a whole bunch of times then nothing is wrong with reasonably expecting that theory to be an accurate representation of how stuff works, your “assumption” belief. And that “assumed” belief is typically used to discover the next brick in discovery. Now the question might be, if one of these foundational bricks are removed, does it discount all of the discoveries afterwards. And of course the answer is maybe or maybe not. But it doesn’t necessarily follow that it must discount those future discoveries.
How were the Egyptian pyramids built? Each block is pretty much a crude geopolymer made from a slurry of rock and disaggregated limestone, poured and tamped down over and over in crude wooden molds by the ancient equivalent of a bucket brigade. Margaret Morris, Joseph Davidovits, and Michel W. Barsoum collectively make a very compelling case, backed by a large amount of data, that the pyramids aren’t really as special as people make them out to be.
As for why they were built, it was just the Pharaohs trying to show up other rulers by building bigger and grander tombs. Happens over and over throughout history, and indeed led to the collapse of many civilizations strapped for resources. Hubris is a bitch.
Water memory is bullshit in its plainest form. It flies in the face many of the most fundamental and well-established principles of chemistry and physics, and the experiments that come out in favor of the idea are so poorly done and so full of holes that it’s a wonder anyone with a functioning brain could take it seriously at all.
Here’s how science works in a very brief nutshell, Andy. Researchers look at a body of evidence and look for holes, then formulate a problem to solve and lay out their predicted solution to that problem. They then perform an experiment, meticulously writing down the methods they followed and the materials they used in precise quantities. (The important part is that the scientists follow exacting methods and control as many variables as possible; if they get sloppy, factors beyond the variable they’re studying can have an impact, and therefore confound the results.)
Once the experiment is done and over with, the results are analyzed and conclusions are draw, a paper is written in excruciating detail, and submitted for peer review. It is at this stage that other scientists in the field voice criticisms and concerns, and may offer alternative interpretations of results. It’s also at this stage that junk science gets, for the most part, weeded out — if the experiment was crap and the results are meaningless, the paper gets rejected.
Following peer review, the paper gets published, and other scientists perform the experiment to confirm the results. If their results differ significantly, new papers are written challenging the original study. If they’re results confirm the original study, odds are, the experiment will go unpublished, but would likely serve as a starting point for further experimentation.
Scientists don’t just blindly take someone’s word on a matter and run with it, but they also don’t waste time doing the same handful of experiments over and over again. The scientific method and the process of getting published in a peer-reviewed journal were established to ensure human knowledge can reliably expand at a steady pace, and ideas that can stand on their own legs are the ideas that consistently stand up to scrutiny.
Grr! I meant “their results” and not “they’re results”. It’s too bad I can’t go back to edit errors.
Thank you for a rare, cogent comment.
yes. sand ramps, man-power and religion
Others in the same ilk that occupy my ‘specials’ shelf are: Rose Shapiro’s “Suckers”, Francis Wheen’s “How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World”, Ben Goldacre’s “Bad Science, Michael Schermer’s “The Borderlands of Science” and “Why People Believe Weird Things”, and Christopher Wanjek’s “Bad Medicine”……… then there are a dozen or more on the anti-Church of Gore theme!
Waiting for a Lottery win to buy more good books!
Keep up the good work Angela (et al),.
Robin
Homoeopathy not a medicine?? According to my understanding it is the principle of tiny amounts of “substance” producing similar symptoms to the ones to be “cured” thereby stimulating the natural immune responses. As opposed to the more usual allopathic (I think that word is correct) system of administering a susbstance to act against the symptoms thereby relieving the immune system of some effort. Many homoeopaths are also conventional medical doctors and use the system appropriate in a particular case. As far as I know there are some perfectly good, fully documented studies of homoepathic systems which show that they appear to work in some instances and not in others – rather like most other medicines.
Yes, homeopathy is NOT medicine. It is absurd pseudoscience. The 10:23 campaign has a great website that outlines some of the basic facts of just exactly why this is so: http://www.1023.org.uk/
Here is Professor Edzard Ernst, a researcher and physician specialising in the study of ‘Complimentary and Alternative Medicine’, talking about why he changed his mind about how homeopathy works: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2012/apr/03/homeopathy-why-i-changed-my-mind
And here is a very informative booklet produced by Sense About Science, which deals with systematic reviews of homeopathy: http://www.cochrane.org/sites/default/files/uploads/SenseAboutSystematicReviews.pdf
Quite right, of course, Angela. One of my favourite and “must read” books is “Trick or Treatment by Singh and Edzard. Thanks for the three URLs which are new to me.
You’re welcome Robin. Trick or Treatment is superb. A must read for everybody planning on using CAM.
Computer Aided Masturbation..?
First off, “allopath” is a pejorative term cooked up by those quacko-paths of various prefixes (homeopaths, naturopaths, osteopath, whatever-path; take your pick, if it’s got “-path” in the name, it’s a big red flag that you’re dealing with pseudoscientific bullshit). “Allo-” meaning other, and “allopath” is a doctor that treats everything other than the disease itself. It’s bullshit really, and deeply insulting to anyone with the mettle to make it through a legitimate medical school at that.
Modern medicine (as in real, legitimate medicine, practiced by a licensed medical doctor) has numerous strategies for dealing with health issues at its disposal. Preventative treatment (which ranges from vaccinations to just teaching patients how to take care of themselves), etiological treatment (which attacks the root cause of an ailment), and symptomatic treatment (which seeks to mitigate the symptoms experienced by a patient, used when a disease is mild or when no cause can be found).
Homeopathy is utter bullshit for one very simple reason: a homeopath is essentially prescribing pure water. The substances used in homeopathic remedies are so diluted that they physically cannot have any measurable impact on the body. It’s a placebo basically. You can buy deionized water from Wal-Mart and you’d be getting basically the same thing.
And, since it’s not like there’s any way to test whether it came from Big Box Mart or from Quack Labs, Inc., there’s a very wide door open for scammers; since homeopathic remedies are unregulated and completely legal in the US, and basically amount to just water, you can sell little phials of water for truly vicious prices and claim it’s a heal-all panacea with zero side-effects. Needless to say, I take a very dim view of people who are aware that homeopathy is junk, but choose to sell it anyway; at that point, they’re basically preying on peoples’ desperation. At least homeopaths that go through the motions of diluting chemicals to oblivion are well-meaning idiots.
Take care not to conflate homeopathy with a likely real phenomenon known as hormesis, wherein small — but significant! — environmental stressors have an apparent beneficial effect on an organism. The mechanism isn’t understood, but it has been hypothesized that it prompts an organism to kick in its repair mechanisms without experiencing much initial damage, thereby leaving those mechanisms to go further and patch up smaller bits of wear-and-tear.
nothing wrong with a placebo
How exactly can you blame skeptics for the burning of books? Are you unaware of the doings of the Catholic church? Or of how many books of your precious and “unchanging” Word of “God” were burned by the people who claimed to believe it? Tell me how that is the fault of men of intellect?
Wow. Really. The holocaust? Anyway… someone needs to get a copy of the OED and look up the damn word. Ask if they know what credulous/credulity mean… here is a hint… accusing someone of being credulous is not a compliment.
On the other hand:
Skeptic
noun
1.
a person who questions the validity or authenticity of something purporting to be factual.
2.
a person who maintains a doubting attitude, as toward values, plans, statements, or the character of others.
3.
a person who doubts the truth of a religion, especially Christianity, or of important elements of it.
I would bet dimes to donuts that it is Number 3 that really pisses the commenter off.
You could point out that philosophical skepticism which is where the modern terms derives its meaning started in ancietn greece… long before Christianity. Though philosophical skepticism is very different from what we are discussing.
Their comment is hyperbole.
Give me 1 skeptic over a truck load of credulous fools any day.
It’s funny cos she thinks believing everything you see makes you intelligent somehow…