Posts tagged James

Visit the Pigasus Award page www.randi.org Good evening! Tonight, we are pleased to present this year’s Pigasus Awards to the following very-deserving people. It was a hard call — there seem to be millions all over the world clambering to make it onto the following shortlist — but these folks had that special something that commanded our attention and, in the end, impressed us like no others. No matter if it was blatant cynicism, shocking callousness, lazy ignorance, or merely old-fashioned pig-headedness — these men and women took those qualities that most vex us to their wild, crazy extremes. We’d salute them, but we’re too busy gaping. For the scientist who did the most to promote woo in 09 Dr. Mehmet Oz is a Harvard-educated cardiac physician whose current TV show, while providing some basic wisdom re medical matters, also promotes and endorses such quackery as Reiki of which Ozs wife is a practitioner along with all sorts of energy medicine and other magic. Oprah Winfrey, following his appearance on her TV show, set him up with a show of his own, which has heavy ratings and brings him book sales and the other fruits of success. Proper scientific studies have found that Reiki offers no therapeutic effects, nor is it beneficial for any condition, though it does fatten the wallets of the practitioners. For the funding organization that wasted the most money on pseudo-science Iraq’s Interior Ministry had, by the end of 2009, spent USD $85000000 on a dowsing rod called …