A Collection of Strange Beliefs, Amusing Deceptions, and Dangerous Delusions

From Abracadabra to Zombies

reader comments: radionics

24 Sept 2015
I have never read so bull shit about you are putting out [sic] about good and effective alternative treatments. It is obvious that you are paid by the drug companies to discredit reasonable treatments.

reply: What makes it obvious that I'm paid by drug companies? I'm not paid by anybody, but you seem to think that only those paid by drug companies would be critical of so-called alternative treatments. What you call "good and effective alternative treatments," I would probably call placebo medicine.

The drug companies ARE NOT in the healing business but in the business to make money.

reply: That's a false dichotomy. Many people are in the healing business to make money, including so-called alternative healers. So what? Some are in the healing business AND make money. So what? It may be true that billions of dollars are spent on prescription drugs, but it can't be denied that many prescription drugs actually benefit millions of people daily. How much benefit comes from placebo medicine is highly debatable, but my guess is that the benefit is miniscule compared to the cost.

Anyone that has a good PROVEN treatment is immediately discredited by you assholes and someday you will answer for your lack of caring.

reply: Now you're getting technical. ("Asshole" is a technical term in law enforcement and refers to anyone who doesn't tow the line they draw in the sand.) Actually, any treatment that is proven to work becomes medicine.

Mainstream Cancer and heart disease is the biggest money scheme ever put on the market and the drug companies and medical profession are charging such exorbitant markups in the medications that it is absolutely EVIL.

reply: Medicine is expensive. And some practices regarding prices of drugs are wrong. Bernie Sanders has a plan to do something about it. All you're doing is whining.

People are dying because they want the money and anytime that anything looks like it might cure something the data is removed from the market immediately.

reply: Yes, people are dying and some are dying because they can't afford insurance or proper medical care. It is a disgrace that we are the only advanced industrial nation on the planet that does not have a national health service. Your claim that anytime anything looks like it might cure something the data is removed from the market immediately is utter nonsense.

You are the ones with the drug companies [sic] executives that ought to be in prison. I would go on with a lot of examples as to what happened to Royal Rife and other but you make me sick and I have had enough. If there was any way I could get your site down I would but evil is rampant and someone would follow you with the same crap. Have and [sic] nice day as the day is coming that you will be explaining yourself to "you know who" and you will rot in hell.

Ken West

reply: Have a nice day? Seriously, you consider Royal Rife a hero? Anyway, I wish there were a hell and I was in charge of who would go there. But I digress. If I thought it would do any good, I'd recommend you read some of the classics in self-deception regarding bogus medical practices, e.g., Why Bogus Therapies Often Seem to Work by the late Barry L. Beyerstein, Ph.D. and How People Are Fooled by Ideomotor Action by Ray Hyman, Ph.D. You might also read my non-classic Energy Healing: Looking in All the Wrong Places.

Ken West replies in his kind, eloquent fashion:

At least you had the courtesy to answer,  but you still are full of it and you cause a lot more harm than good by putting out distorted false information.  Linus Pauling (who also won TWO Nobel prizes) also said "every disease known to man is caused by a mineral deficiency".

reply: Really? I doubt that Linus Pauling said anything nearly that stupid. (Maybe you're thinking of Joel Wallach.) I'm not the only one who doubts Pauling ever said all diseases are caused by a mineral deficiency. The Pauling blog doubts he ever said it and notes that none of the 1,500 websites that use this "quote" give a reference and that most of them sell minerals and other supplements.* The Linus Pauling Institute notes:

A statement purportedly attributed to Linus Pauling has proliferated on the Internet, often in association with the sale of mineral supplements. The alleged quote is usually akin to “You can trace every sickness, every disease, and every ailment to a mineral deficiency.” We are reasonably certain that Pauling never made such a statement for the obvious reason that it is untrue. 

Where did you get that claim, from Natural News? I found this dubious quote on that site run by Mike Adams. If you are a follower of that deceiving prevaricator, it is easy to see why you don't know how to tell good information from distorted and false info. Adams is the king of nonsense when it comes to health claims.

Obviously you only read enough to form your own BS opinions and you are entitled to them.  I hear them all the time you are so far out of it, Like I said you and your opinions make me sick. And after reading your answer it is quite obvious that you don't know what the hell you are talking about.  That is enough correspondence to jerks like you and don't bother to answer as you will just be deleted and tossed in the trash where you belong. 

reply: Thanks for your insights. I'm glad you have relieved me of the obligation to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed man.

__________

13 June 2008
Radionics does work. It's taught in colleges in England and other European countries.

reply: I'll take your word for it, but I'd like to know what you mean by 'works' and why you consider being taught in England and other European countries relevant to whether something 'works'.

Only in this country where rotten drug pushing pharmas run the country do we have such backwards suppressed "technology". Nurses and Doctors use radionics in England.

reply: You realize that there are many more colleges in America, England, and Europe where pharmacology is taught than there are places where radionics is taught. Does this mean that pharmacology 'works'? And there are certainly more doctors and nurses that prescribe or administer pharmaceuticals than there are those who use radionics. Don't radionics promoters push their devices, too? You think it's backwards to require that claims about medical devices be true and the machines actually do what they claim? Where is the proof that the energies radionics allegedly detects even exist?

Big Pharma doesn't run the country alone, anyway. There are other powerful lobbies that share in buying the influence of those who govern us. I don't have time to list them all, but we can all name a few of the giants. The petroleum industry, especially those pesky Saudis. Halliburton. Agriculture. Tobacco. Munitions manufacturers.

America is the richest third-world nation, where the medicine is arcane and special interests are trying to ban vitamins.

reply: Who's trying to ban vitamins? The tobacco industry? Halliburton? McDonalds? Where do you get your information? And even if there is some vast anti-vitamin conspiracy, who cares? What possibility of success would such a cabal have? Our fearless leaders not only take vitamins but many of them think bee pollen will cure their allergies. If anything, Congress is likely to insist on a free and unregulated market for the herbal and supplement industry. You have to be careful here. If you want people to take you seriously, you shouldn't admit that you think there are "special interests" trying to ban vitamins.

Furthermore, there are lots of adjectives one might use to describe American medicine but 'arcane' shouldn't be one of them. There are hundreds of medical books and journals you could read, if you had the interest in finding out what doctors know. Medical knowledge is not known only to the initiated few or some secret cabal.

Finally, I suppose you mean it as an insult to refer the America as a third-world nation and consider America "backwards" because radionics is not taught in our universities. Many of our universities, however, are jumping on the "traditional wisdom" bandwagon and are offering instruction in such things as acupuncture and healing touch. Soon, we might see other pseudosciences like radionics being taught alongside biochemistry, genetics, and immunology. The country seems to be moving in that direction.

Pretty soon you'll write an article on how lemons are poisonous and Vitamin C is a "fluke" and needs to be heavily regulated for 300 bucks a bottle. People will be dying from scurvy again, as this treasonous government wants the people to go back to the dark ages where no one can read and we are all poverty stricken and ignorant. Why do you wish for such? American's don't go to the dentist anymore unless they are rich. Our teeth are rotting while we get poisoned by garbage "trendy" drug bullshit, and the water and everything else is poisoned. It's all okay, though, right?

no name given

reply: Before I retired from teaching, I used to make up paragraphs like your concluding one as practice exercises for my students. Their task was to find the fallacies. You evade the issue, poison the well, and produce a straw man instead of trying to demonstrate that the actual argument I give in the radionics article is flawed by inaccuracy, irrelevancy, omission, or some other logical error. And you make up stuff about American dental hygiene and our water supplies. Everything isn't poisoned. Dental care is better than ever, but could still be improved, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The water is safe to drink in all our major metropolitan areas. We don't have cholera epidemics like some countries do because our water supply is safe. The water filtering and purification systems in use throughout this country are quite advanced. Despite the hype over bottled water, it is not safer or tastier than most tap water. It's true we have been ruled for eight years by an administration that has done little to improve the environment or enforce environmental laws. This administration has also done nothing to encourage the reduction of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases. But none of this is relevant to defending radionics.

You should produce some evidence that Big Pharma is suppressing radionics, rather than assume it. But first you need to explain what you mean by saying radionics "works." Usually, when I hear from people defending unproven medical treatments that  "work," they mean they are satisfied with it. They feel better or their ailment went away after the treatment. This post hoc reasoning satisfies many people who would rather believe in miracles than science. When I try to get them to see that randomized, double-blind, controlled studies are needed to rule out errors in causal reasoning like the post hoc fallacy or confirmation bias, most of them resort to an ad hominem: they call me prejudiced and closed-minded, or accuse me of being a front man for the AMA, Big Pharma, the government, or "them."

radionics

 

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