New Resource Link

A commenter recently bewailed all those ads on TV for bogus remedies. And no, I'm not talking about the ads from Pfizer and Merck, those are bad enough, I'm talking about coral calcium and homeopathy and shark cartilage and all those other miracle cures "they" don't want you to know about. Unfortunately, the medicine drummers have gotten to members of Congress, notably Tom Harkin, so the FDA has very limited powers to regulate the sale of potions that claim to be "nutritional supplements" or homeopathic "remedies." That's why your local CVS has a whole aisle full of frauds and scams. As long as their claims maintain enough weasel wording, the Federal Trade Commission has a hard time going after their advertising as well.

If you want to check out any such claims, Quackwatch is truly encyclopedic. Dr. Barrett's love child now has a place in our sidebar. It's a lot of fun to explore and includes some very useful basic essays on the philosophy of science and critical thinking in general as well.

Also much fun is the Quackometer. You can actual run any website through the Quackometer and get a reasonably intelligent artificial intelligence rating of its level of quackery. I'm very happy to report that Stayin' Alive gets zero ducks, but Deepak Chopra gets two or three. He probably deserves more. Also, Orac is all over the health scammers, if you prefer a bloggier approach. (Orac is not nearly as hip to health care policy as he would like to think, he's got a touch of the libertarian infection, but he's solid on the science.) So head off and waste some time, you might learn something along the way.