Feng shui for Lotto guarantee!

We all know by now that you can't rely on psychics or numerologists or clairvoyants to give you winning Lotto numbers. A good chunk of them will even state outright that they won't do this for you. Those who do try to predict the numbers fail at about the same rate as the rest of us.

But now the secret to winning the lottery has finally been revealed - it's all about feng shui, the mystic art of arranging stuff.

Belief in feng shui "triggers jackpot win"

Gold symbolises wealth. Check. Coins represent money. Check. The front door represents good energy coming into your house. Check.

So when a Sydney man glued a gold coin to his front doorstep in November, he believed he had checked all the feng shui boxes for a windfall - which he got after winning more than $1.2 million at the BoysTown charity lotto.

This method, of course, comes with all the usual caveats of guaranteed ways to win...

Australian feng shui expert Elizabeth Wiggins, who has some coins under her front door mat, said the win was more about the positive mindset the man attached to that coin.

"I have coins in my front door, but that doesn't mean they are going to win a million bucks," said Wiggins, who is president of the Association of Feng Shui consultants.

In other words, if you win then it worked for you and if you don't win, you're doing it wrong.

And if you're at all unsure about the advice on offer in this story then consider this statement...

"[But] the really important thing is the action that he took - to buy the tickets. If he didn't buy the tickets, he wouldn't have won." [my bolding]

Let me repeat that sage advice, large and bold and bright red...

"If he didn't buy the tickets, he wouldn't have won"

Wow! I mean, really, wow! That is some amazing insight there. I really must look deeper into this feng shui thing. It's the way of the future for sure.

Now I know where I've been going wrong - I made a decision years ago not to start buying Lotto tickets until I started winning. Bugger.

Homeopathy: RIP?

By now you're probably well aware that a bunch of UK politicians got together last year to look at the evidence for homeopathy. No one was able to find it. Boom-tish!

Actually, that's not much of a joke at all. Yesterday those MPs released their report and it is damning of homeopathy and even more damning of the idea that the government should be sponsoring it.

I'm not going to discuss it here because better minds than mine have it well and truly covered.

The Lay Scientist, Martin Robbins, provides a good summary of the saga in The Guardian: Homeopathy is useless and unethical.

Orac at Respectful Insolence has chimed in with his views on the homeopathy verdict.

Others who were quick to cover it and cover it well were...

Quackometer: Bleakest Day for Homeopathy

Gimpy: Homeopathy - merciless punch

DC Science: Stop funding & licensing Homeopathy

Edzard Ernst: No to homeopathy


MORE: How Does Homeopathy Work?

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BCA vs SINGH UPDATE:

In other news, Simon Singh should be in the court room now, appealing against the preliminary ruling in the libel case brought against him by the British Chiropractic Association (BCA). The result of this appeal could spell huge change for the future of English libel law. Keep an eye out at Jack of Kent's blog for what will likely be an insightful summary of the day's events.

OR, if you're into Twitter, follow Jack of Kent's regular updates there.

Quack-Attack: Oz crackdown on health fraud?

Peter Bowditch mentions a news item discussing a new code of conduct intended to crack down on health fraud. I found a copy of the article in The Age...

CHARLATAN healers who exploit vulnerable sick people by selling fake balms and rituals will face stiff penalties under new national laws.

Unfortunately that's as promising as this news item gets and it concludes with a somewhat watered down (not quite to homeopathic standards) explanation of the reach of the new laws...

The code of conduct will catch out people who: claim training that they don't have; behave inappropriately, for instance in sexual contact; do not inform their clients of any risks involved in the treatment; or do not get informed consent.

If "behaving inappropriately" doesn't also include, for instance, selling a product or service with no plausible mechanism for efficacy and no evidence to suggest efficacy, then I really can't see what the code will achieve.

Interestingly the story states that the laws are targeted at unregistered health practitioners which it describes as "those who do not fall under registration schemes such as those for doctors, nurses or pharmacists...". This suggests, to me, that pharmacies will still get away with selling all manner of otherwise fraudulent products from magnets to ear candles to mass-market homeopathy.

Hopefully I'm being too cynical. I doubt it though.

Where will morning television be if quack health products are banned? Alt-pharma is big business and has far more commercial and political influence than its proponents and supporters would like to admit.

Naturopathy: what a week!

Earlier this week I was listening to the afternoon program on WA's ABC Radio. Host Russell Woolf was chatting with a female colleague about some general topics. I came in part way through so I'm not sure who she was but she mentioned that a family member was studying in Sydney to be a naturopath.

Woolf, somewhat dryly and in a very understated manner, asked "do you still speak to him?"

I was a little taken aback. Did he mean what I thought he meant?

His colleague, apparently not sensing what I was sensing, explained that they were a close-knit family and the conversation continued on to other things. She went on to mention a story about a fear of rabies in Bali. Woolf said it would be wise to get shots for such things if travelling to Asia and his colleague appeared to agree then Woolf added one more "throw-away" comment to the effect of "I don't think a naturopath would be much use if you get rabies."

Ouch! I was gobsmacked. Either I seriously misunderstood the conversation or Woolf took two clear and successful swipes at naturopathy. I don't think his colleague saw either of them.

Things are a bit surreal in the sceptical world this year. We've had the (possible) imminent demise of the "Anti-Vaccination Network" (Australian Vaccination Network - AVN) and the stellar fall from infamy of vaccines-cause-autism proponent Andrew Wakefield.

Now, back to the subject of naturopathy. The sceptical blogging world has exploded after Wordpress took down the For the Sake of Science blog following a complaint about its content. The content in question was a scathing article about Maine naturopath Christopher Maloney and it was assumed, incorrectly as it turns out, that Maloney had filed the complaint.

Avid followers of sceptical blogs and online fora will know only too well what happens when someone tries to censor opinion or discussion and it has happened again, of course. When PZ Myers sends out a call for bloggers everywhere to call someone a quack*, you can bet that pretty soon any Google search for that person will return dozens, no hundreds - or possibly thousands - of results with that person labelled a quack. And that is precisely what happened here.

The story became a little more bizarre when it was revealed that someone else entirely, one Andrea Moritz, had actually lodged the complaint with Wordpress. Moritz had also been targetted on the sceptical blog and took action, seemingly on behalf of Maloney (who he called "Dr. Makoney" in an explanatory letter to blog author Michael Hawkins) since the complaint related to the article on Maloney, not one on Moritz (I told you it got more bizarre). So, naturally, Myers decided this guy must also be a quack and the Streisand Effect will likely be demonstrated in all its glory yet again in 3, 2, 1...

Moritz describes himself as a "medical intuitive". To my understanding, this means he thinks he's psychic and can "see" health problems. He's authored books on alternative approaches to health (I understand from others' comments that it boils down to "it's your own fault if you get sick") yet his own website carries a wordy disclaimer that basically tells the reader not to assume any of the advice is accurate because it is based on little more than the author's own opinions and theories.

Based on that alone I don't know whether anyone should use his information or not but if personal opinions and theories are worth anything then I think I'd be steering clear. Your opinion may differ.

And, after all this, For the Sake of Science has just shifted to a new host and is back up in full with more readers than it probably ever enjoyed before (I'd never seen it until tonight). As the new address becomes more widely publicised, it's likely that the blog will rate very highly in searches for either of the alt-medders at the heart of the saga.

I don't know if Maloney will thank Moritz for his kindly intervention and the resultant publicity.

*To be fair to Maloney, in this instance, Myers quotes him advising the use of elderberry as an H1N1 (swine flu) inhibitor and suggests he's disparaging vaccines. In fact, Maloney had written "Parents waiting for vaccinations can provide their children with black elderberry..." [my bolding]. Taken in isolation, this does not appear to demonstrate an anti-vaccination position. I can't find the original comment in order to put it in context.

Steve Novella, on the other hand, included a little more context in his take-down of Maloney. You can learn more about what Maloney thinks about real medicine in the discussion that ensues in the comments over there.


MORE:

Andreas Moritz at Respectful Insolence

AVN not immune from scrutiny

I imagine Meryl Dorey, president of the "Anti Vaccination Network" (aka Australian Vaccination Network, or AVN), wishes there was a vaccine that would immunise her group from public and government scrutiny. But would she use it even if it existed?

Things have been going from bad to worse for the lizard-people-conspiracy-mongering AVN since the tragic death of baby Dana McCaffery last year.

Now, Sean the Blogonaut points us to an article in today's Norther Star...

THE BANGALOW-BASED Australian Vaccination Network will undergo a full audit by the NSW Office of Liquor, Gaming and Racing following complaints it has been unlawfully fundraising.

The article also lists other complaints the AVN are having to deal with. Unfortunately there's no comments section.

Last week Meryl Dorey announced plans to leave her role as president unless someone donated enough money to make the effort worthwhile (at least, that's how I read her plea/announcement - read more on the AVN's financial problems).

Peter Bowditch raised the charity registration issue on his "Millenium Project" blog last year and advised readers, and Ms Dorey, that he'd filed a report with the relevant authority. Bowditch's complete AVN history is an interesting read.


MORE:

Stop the AVN public Facebook page

Vaccination Awareness & Information Service

Stardom & Murder: the same thing?

Liz Jones has written in the Mail Online...

LIZ JONES: Honour killings? What we've done to young Emma is just as shameful

She goes on to compare the immense popularity of Harry Potter star Emma Watson, apparently the highest paid "actress" [sic] in the world, with Medine Memi, a Turkish teenager whose body was found after she was buried alive in an "honour killing" by members of her own family.

If you're having trouble seeing any connection between the two then read her article - and you'll be none the wiser. The connection isn't even tenuous. It's utterly ridiculous.

On one hand we have a young woman who's chosen to pursue a career in which she clearly excels and who has gained immense recognition in that field. On the other a girl who was murdered for talking to boys on the phone.

On one hand we have have a young woman who could retire from acting tomorrow and probably never need to work again. On the other we have a lifeless corpse.

On the one hand we have a young woman who is revered and idolised. On the other a girl tied to a chair, thrown in a hole and buried - alive.

Sure Liz, their situations are just the same really.

I think Jones might be taking her "feminism" just a little bit too far. She's really stretching to find a way to condemn the patriarchy for something she's apparently not very happy about.

Emma Watson is young and pretty - and rich beyond most people's dreams. Obviously it's because she's young and pretty and nothing else. It's not like she can act or anything, not like Meryl Streep anyway. We should only give recognition and success to old women otherwise we're just like religiously motivated murderers. Why weren't Helen Mirren or Meryl Streep given the role of teenage wizard Hermione Granger? It's so obviously unfair, to Jones.

Let us not forget though that Harry Potter is written by J. K. Rowling, a woman last time I checked. So it's not the patriarchy's fault at all that a teenage girl became a star. But if we're unclear about the ultra-feminist dummy spit that's occurring here, Jones clears that up for us too...

The most powerful men are inevitably all ancient and unglamorous with old-lady arms...

See, there aren't any young, highly-paid male actors. All successful men are old with something called "old-lady" arms! (And "we're" the ones not favourably portraying older women?) And there aren't any rich older women actors or women in positions of power.

The whole article is just another bizarre attack on "the (western) patriarchy".

Batman, a town in the south-east of Turkey, has been nicknamed ‘Suicide City’: three-quarters of all suicides here are committed by women – nearly everywhere else in the world, men are three times more likely to kill themselves.

Now, if Jones wanted to draw comparisons, why wasn't this the issue? Why not a headline that reads "Honour Killings? Western men have it worse"? But that wouldn't suit her fundamentalist-feminist agenda one bit. And no, I'm not saying that comparison needs to be made since I can't see why anyone would even draw any comparison between forced suicides in Muslim countries and general male suicide in the rest of the world. Both are concerning but chalk and cheese are more easily compared.

I don’t mean to trivialise what happened to Medine.

So the gross trivialising was an accident??!! Pfft!

Am I misconstruing Jones's article? Have I missed her point by painting this as a gender war diatribe? Absolutely not...

Let’s make it a war between genders...

And there you have it, from her own keyboard.


via Cubik's Rube

Batman on homeopathy

Make your own Batman comic at the Batman and Robin Comic Generator

Found at Bad Astronomy

Dr Rachie trumps Dr Mercola at the Shorty Awards - again!

So the final round of voting in the Twitter Shorty Awards is over.

You may have followed the bloodbath that ensued when alt-med gurus Mike Adams and Dr Mercola were slapped in the face with a potentised dose of evidence-based reality a little over a week ago. If so, you'll recall that after some bizarre voting activity, centered around both Adams and Mercola - and Dr Joe's ceaseless campaigning and pleading for votes - humble Aussie cell biologist Dr Rachael Dunlop (Dr Rachie) finished round one in first place.

Dunlop had very little time to spike the ball, do a quick victory dance on the alt-medders' virtual graves and flip the bird just once at those who didn't get first place, before round two of voting got under way.*

It was so important that I forgot all about it - and it's over now.

Once again Dr "Free Steak Knives" Mercola sent out the plea to his 64,000-strong Facebook army and 18,000 Twitter followers. "Pleeeease, pleeeease, pleeeease vote for me in these pointless awards. Pleeease. I need this. Reeeally I do. Pleeease show me how much you love me. You say it but you don't show it. Pleeeaaase don't let that Orssie bitch win - I'm nice, she isn't. Bitch, whore, slapper! Love and light. It's really not important but vote for me, pleeease"

Well, something like that. I paraphrased it quite a bit based on previous comments from Dr Mercola. He actually wrote...

HEALP SPREAD NATURAL HEALTH AWARENESS...

"Healp" indeed.

Dunlop, who didn't campaign at all, didn't need any healp. She retained the lead position when polls closed.

Asked about her double victory, newly-crowned Aussie hero Dr Rachie said "Any boss who sacks anyone for not turning up today is a bum." Eloquence is just one of her many virtues. If she wasn't a cell biologist she'd be editing Shakespeare and turning it into classic literature. I've heard a rumour that Dr Phil Plait is looking to have a star named after her - probably that big one we used to call "the sun".

So here's the easy-read summary of events so far... A very, very popular US natural health guru with a combined 82,000 online followers was beaten to the line - TWICE - by someone his "best mate" Mike "I'm #$%&* Disqualified??!!" Adams described as "a virtually unknown doctor from Australia... "

Schadenfreude much?

The ultimate winner of this irrelevant popularity contest will be decided by poll organisers based on a range of criteria. Still, I think Rachael can rightly blow at least one holistic raspberry at her vitriolic "love and light" opponents.


*No, she didn't do any of that stuff. She wrote "thanks" on Twitter.

Living Wisdom in trouble? AVN to close.

AVN to close its doors at the end of this month

That's the headline on Meryl Dorey's latest article over at the Anti Vaccination Network, otherwise know as the "Australian Vaccination Network."

Dorey begins by explaining that she's finding it increasingly difficult to spend time on AVN work and that her family has suffered as a result of her efforts. She puts out the call for a replacement to take over the running of the anti-vaccination organisation then continues (my bolding)...

Alternatively, if a benefactor or series of benefactors come forward to establish a fund that would guarantee the AVN’s existence for at least the next 2-3 years, or if donations were to be come in during the next week that would give us the same financial sustainability, then I would be willing to continue in my role for the foreseeable future.

This morning, I received a call from one of our long-time members – a woman who has been a faithful member and supporter of the AVN for over 15 years. Her mother passed away last year and she was calling to tell me that when the sale of her mother’s house goes through, she has earmarked a donation to give to the AVN to allow me to go to Canberra. When I informed her of the current situation with our organisation, she suggested that I ask people to not only give generously now, but to earmark 1% of their income to support the AVN into the future.

She goes on to explain that Living Wisdom Magazine and a bunch of other stuff will be put up for sale.

If read in a certain, sceptical way, one could be forgiven for thinking it's really just a request for sympathisers to send more money since it's difficult to see how a new president is going to cope any better with a funding shortage.

For some it will sound eerily familiar to televangelist Oral Robert's 1987 claim that God would "call him home" if people didn't send him money. He raised over $9 million as a result of that plea. Dorey should be so lucky.

Read more at Young Australian Skeptics: Meryl Dorey, AVN, Living Wisdom Magazine.

And of course Peter Bowditch couldn't get to his keyboard fast enough after hearing the news. Read Bowditch's letter of condolence, and application for Dorey's position, at the Millenium Project: Meryl Dorey, AVN vacancy

More poll silliness

Oh the fun it never ends...

Last week we had the very, very important Shorty Award poll for health. Sceptics and scientists managed to put Dr Rachael Dunlop in the lead position in the first round of polling, much to the chagrin of alt-med gurus Dr Joseph "Chrome-Dome" Mercola and Mike "Dummy-Spit" Adams.

This week it's the creationists' turn.

It appears that about a month ago someone thought it would be a pretty neat idea to gather 1 million people on Facebook who all think evolution is nonsense. The page, titled "we can find 1,000,000 people who don't believe in Evolution befor June" is pretty self explanatory, even with the obvious spelling mistake and the opening lower-case w.

We all know that important scientific realities are decided by popularity polls rather than research and evidence so last week, with the reality of evolution at stake, some rational people decided to respond with their own poll, appropriately named "We can find 1,000,000 people who DO believe in Evolution before June".

Support for the reality-based pro-evolution poll was going nicely in the early days and soon overtook the original poll. Then notorious poll crasher PZ Myers mentioned it on his blog. Support for evolution is now growing at such a rate it's almost entertaining just refreshing the page and watching the tally increase. Doing the same on the creationist poll is more akin to watching grass grow, but slower.

In the last couple of hours, support for evolution has grown by almost 1,000 to over 109,000 votes while the creationists managed to attract just 200 votes to their cause. God has a mean streak and a sick sense of humour.

If the trend continues we can safely assume no one will ever again cast doubt on the fact of evolution. If they dare we can tell them "it was settled on Facebook". That'll shut them up for sure.