Tag: Crank

Australia’s New Antiscience Party

In a perfect world, high quality science would inform politics and policy. Science cannot determine policy by itself because there are also value judgments and trade-offs that need to be negotiated. At the least, however, policy should be consistent with the best available science. We, of course, don’t live in a perfect world. Too often politics and ideology seem to inform, or...

/ June 29, 2016
Quack duck

How do scientists become cranks and doctors quacks?

What are the characteristics of physicians and scientists that lead them to go down the dark paths of quackery and pseudoscience?

/ June 15, 2009

Where Does Sanjay Gupta Register On The Quackometer?

Four weeks ago I wrote a blog post about Sanjay Gupta’s nomination by the Obama administration as our potential new Surgeon General. Many of you voiced concerns about Sanjay’s nomination, specifically because of his poor handling of the Raelians’ Clonaid fiasco, his inability to counter Michael Moore’s health statistics as presented in Sicko and his relationship to the pharmaceutical industry. As I...

/ February 5, 2009