I’ve seen the above quote on several blogs; I’m just adding to the noise, Let’s see:

• angry mob on my side
• I can utter the statement “you are wrong“
• your ideas are bogus because you aren’t affected directly (you have to “feel” it, forget observation/data)

Then there’s the broader subtext of “I’m a celebrity, which trumps experts in the field.” — weakened somewhat in this context since they are both celebrities.

Yeah, I’m convinced by her irrefutable logic. Not.

Also see Anti anti-vaccination [added 2009-02-14].

I sometimes let the bogus products advertised, particularly on the interminable “infomercials” that suck the remaining life out of almost-dead broadcast TV, annoy me. Well, it’s really not the silly products I’m mad at, it’s the people behind them. Con artists who take advantage of gullible, scientifically naive people who, perhaps desperately (they think) need the solutions being offered. Of course, the woo-masters try to protect themselves with the Quack Miranda Warning (short form: “Just Kidding!”).

After all, who wouldn’t want: the toxins sucked from their body via the soles of their feet; a flushed-out colon; an enlarged and performance-enhanced penis; a full head of non-gray hair; a wrinkle-free face; a fat-free, ideal-weight, toned-up body; more intelligence; better friends; the luxuries one deserves; all the money one needs working just two hours a week; ….

All provided (with no effort on your part) by magic pills, glowing potions, magnetic sheaths, ionized metallic trinkets, spasm-inducing electronic belts, complicated mechanical linkages that are easy to store, real estate investment partners, multi-level marketing schemes, refinanced credit card debt, reverse mortgages, cars that have delusions of being transformers, cereals that think they’re life coaches, ….

Well, ok, I kinda got sidetracked. What I really want to bring to your attention is the “Friday Dose of Woo”. Orac has for nearly two years posted weekly on what he calls “outrageous woo” — mostly medical quackery, but also other assorted pseudoscience and bogus claims.

He has a good question: “Given the hilariously, extravagantly pseudoscientific or spiritual claims made to support some of these devices, it’s hard to image how so many of them never attract the loving attention of the Food and Drug Administration or the counterpart of the FDA in other countries in which these devices are marketed, but, by and large, they don’t.”

Well, until now. See Orac’s Apparently the FDA doesn’t get the “VIBE”, where, in addition to discussing the FDA’s interest, he has links to earlier discussions of the VIBE and links to the Wayback Machine showing how VIBE’s promotion has changed under scrutiny.

image: Oudin coil.jpg (Tesla coil), Wikimedia Commons