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The Health Wars: Fighting Medical Pseudoscience

We present in this special, expanded issue seven timely articles

CFI Sues Walmart for Fraud for Selling Homeopathic Fake Medicine

Walmart is committing wide-scale consumer fraud and endangering the health

FDA Warns Five Homeopathic Manufacturers

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in May posted

CNN Reporters Awarded Balles Critical Thinking Prize for A Deal with the Devil

In their book A Deal with the Devil: The Dark

Google Funds Cold Fusion Research; Results Still Negative

The venerable science publication Nature revealed in May 2019 that

Welcome News on Global Attitudes toward Science and Health from Wellcome

The results of Wellcome Global Monitor 2018, a massive survey

In Memory of Murray Gell-Mann, Who Gave Us Quarks and Ordered the Subatomic World

Gell-Mann helped develop the “standard model" of particle physics. He

Gell-Mann: Reality Is Out There … and It’s Beautiful

From the March/April 2008 SKEPTICAL INQUIRER

Old FBI Documents Reveal Mundane Bigfoot ‘Investigation’

In June 2019, breathless headlines referred to an “FBI Bigfoot

Credulous Flying Saucer ‘Expert’ Stanton T. Friedman Dead at Eighty-Four

Stanton Terry Friedman (July 29, 1934–May 13, 2019) was one

Gloucester Sea-Serpent Mystery: Solved after Two Centuries

Joe Nickell, PhD, is CSI’s senior research fellow. A former

The Trapped Ghost

Massimo Polidoro is an investigator of the paranormal, lecturer, and

Opioids: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Harriet Hall, MD, also known as “The SkepDoc,” is a

The New Wave of Exorcism

Stuart Vyse is a psychologist and author of Believing in

Science and Society Beliefs across the Globe

A Study of Fifty-Four Countries Assesses Public Optimism and Reservations

[NEW AND NOTABLE

Listing does not preclude future review

[ LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Carl Zimmer’s article “Seven Big Misconceptions about Heredity” (May/June 2019)

XKCD

The Remedies of National Geographic

The National Geographic Society has published a series of books about “natural healing remedies.” They are full of claims that lack scientific evidence, are inconsistent and internally contradictory, and don’t reach even minimal scientific standards. The NGS should reconsider them

National Geographic Book Is a ‘Natural’ Disaster

HARRIET HALL

Quackery at WHO: A Chinese Affair

China has aggressively and successfully introduced its prescientific traditional medicine into the World Health Organization (WHO). This phenomenon, evident since 2002, has become increasingly worrisome and urgent with inclusion of traditional Chinese medicine in WHO’s update of International Classification of Diseases

Magic Waters

There is a long history of belief in the supposed “magical” powers of water. Some are “natural” attributes considered miraculous, talismanic, or legendary; others involve waters supposedly “imbued” with “energy” or “powers” such as memory (homeopathy). All are examples of magical, supernatural thinking trumped by science

Laser Acupuncture: High-Tech Placebo

Its proponents may have hijacked a high-tech tool, but laser acupuncture has no more scientific validity than acupuncture with needles

The New Phrenology

Trauma researchers, using modern imaging, have attempted to link psychiatric disorders to child abuse by demonstrating smaller hippocampal volumes. The studies differ little from those of nineteenth-century phrenology

Unskeptical: Indian Scientists’ Opinions of Ayurvedic Medicine

Ayurvedic medicine is so deeply imbued into Indian culture that even most scientists in India strongly support it, according to a survey of 1,100 Indian scientists. This mostly exempts it from critical scrutiny

Suing for Science

Why the Center for Inquiry chose homeopathy for its first court cases challenging any of the forms of pseudoscience that plague society

Countering the Pseudoscience in Psychotherapy for the Young

Pseudoscience in Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy: A Skeptical Field Guide

Chernobyl and the Future of Nuclear Energy

The 1986 explosion of the Number 4 unit of the