Skeptologic

Last week, I criticized Walgreen’s for selling unscientific, untested supplements (Airborne and Homeopathy) in their store. It was particularly disturbing to see these items being sold in the legitimate pharmacy where I go when I need real medicine. Last night, I was disturbed to see pseudoscience on The Science Channel. It wasn’t one of their programs, but rather on a commercial during the program. The commercial was for Dr. Frank’s No Pain Spray. They claimed that the spray would cure pain from Arthritis, Stiffness, Fibromyalgia, Carpal Tunnel, and a lot more. The commercial was also littered with personal testimonials. The ability to cure multiple conditions and anecdotal evidence is what peddlers of pseudo-scientific crap use when there is no real evidence that their product works. But as it turns out, I didn’t even need these red flags to activate my Baloney Detection Kit (thank you Carl Sagan). Right away they tout it as “Dr. Frank’s Homeopathic joint and muscle pain relief.” Ah, homeopathy. I reserve the highest amount of ridicule for this type of alternative medicine. It’s bad enough that they are able to get away with selling people a small bottle of water as medicine for $19.95, but to see this promoted on the Science Channel was very very disheartening. Please watch the very entertaining video below of James Randi describing just how stupid homeopathy is. Oh, and by the way “Dr.” Frank, James Randi has $1,000,000 for you if you can prove your snake oil works. Not that you need it, I’m sure you’ve made much more than that by bilking plenty of people out of their hard earned money by selling them tiny bottles of water.