May 7, 2024 — We thought it would be hard to top the vacuous absurdity of juice cleanses. But it turns out that the Washington Post was up for the challenge. So the paper assigned an intrepid travel reporter and even hired a model to make the medical spa baloney of intravenous infusions for hangover therapy sound and look […]
December 28, 2020 — Merriam-Webster tells us that the word of the year is pandemic. (That was easy.) Oxford says that one word is not enough for this year, so the Oxford lexicographers have a produced a report to explore the many words and trends that define this weird year. But our approach to this question is simple. We […]
April 17, 2020 — Scared, bored, and isolated. In the midst of a pandemic, we have the perfect breeding ground for crackpot science. Over the Easter weekend, a rash of fires in the UK scorched almost two dozen cellphone towers. In all, about 50 towers in the UK have burned because of a crackpot theory that 5G communications boost […]
March 18, 2020 — A public health emergency can have an unfortunate side effect. With the coronavirus pandemic, pseudoscience, quackery, and fraud are emerging, too. Diets and supplements to “boost” your immune system are a common form of this fraud. Honestly, sometimes this sort of misinformation flies under the radar of normally discerning people. But we praise Dietitians of […]
October 25, 2019 — Any number of people want to sell you magic steps to prevent dementia. Lumosity had to pay a two million dollar fine in 2016 because it “preyed on consumer fears about age related cognitive decline.” But that hasn’t stopped the company. It’s just being more careful about falsely promoting its game to prevent dementia. Nonetheless, […]
August 4, 2018 — The booming wellness industry is having quite a run in the news this week. It started with a lengthy examination of Gwyneth Paltrow’s business of monetizing empty wellness claims. Then, we learned that UNC is teaching some startling wellness concepts to all of its undergraduates. Cancer, dementia, and obesity (of course) are simply diseases of […]
