Skepticism, evidence, science, mythbusting, consumer protection
News headlines from Europe about skeptical activism, mythbusting, science related policy decisions, consumer protection, frauds, health scams, alternative medicine, bad scientific practices, pseudoscience etc.
The most popular Hungarian internet portal “Index” had recently launched a new format by organizing the articles into folders based on topic. They call the structure as Index-Files referring to X-Files. During the last period the quality of scientific articles on Index is increasing rapidly and they bravely and thoroughly cover several topics related to skepticism. Their new Pseudoscience – Debunking “Files” collects related articles from the past years.
After a recent series of controversies surrouding German cancer clinics, in which so-called Heilpraktiker (alternative therapists such as Klaus Ross who require fewer qualifications than regular physicians) are allowed to perform invasive treatments, American oncologist David Gorski (Orac) of Science-Based Medicine has extensively studied this phenomenon and published his results.
The conclusions are damning: although some ‘legitimate’ experimental drugs (like 3-BP or DCA) that might have promising future applications are being tested in these clinics, ‘German clinics often charge enormous sums of money for treatments that range from the unproven to the dubious to pure quackery’, whilst offering false hope to desperate patients around Europe. He recounts the story of British stomach cancer patient Pauline Gahan, who has put her faith and fortunes (£300,000; some of it raised publicly) in the Hallwang Clinic in Dornstetten.
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On 19 November 2016, the Portuguese Skeptical Community (COMCEPT) hold their 5th annual conference – ComceptCon – in the city of Porto. This year, the recently formalised association focuses on the theme “Explain the Brain!” (Esmiuçar o Cérebro!), and is supported by the Associação Viver a Ciência and facilitated by Pólo das Indústrias Criativas da UPTEC. About 100 guests are expected to join the convention, which is free to attend.
The speakers, coming from several different disciplines and Portuguese national institutes, are:
The norwegian skeptical association, SKEPSIS have not been very active the last few years. This has been due to problems with the board, and an organisation which was not rigged for adversity.
Some members have soldiered on through these tough times, and the organisation has stayed afloat, despite not organising events or collecting membership fees.
After talks about closing down the organisation this summer two former board chairmen decided to try too collect a new board and keep the organisation working.
This October a board consisting of 4 people were elected to assemble the pieces. The boards first assignment is to start up the organisation anew, to get noticed and make a platform for further growth.
“L’arte del disinganno”, the XV course teaching skeptics to debunk tricks and lies of the occult world, to investigate past and present mysterious events, to take part in experiments with psychics, and to understand hoaxes will take place in Padova during 7 weekends from January to June 2017.
Students will be able to attend lessons held by a pool of 20 experts, with theoric lessons and practical work and activities.
To celebrate the MENSA awards in Lleida the head of engineering at the Ascó nuclear power plant will be giving a talk titled Recreational Quantum Mechanics on Friday the 25th November in Lleida at 19:30.
Three people have been arrested on suspicion of manslaughter after a 71-year-old diabetic woman died following a workshop in Seend, Wiltshire based around slapping as a form of ‘self-healing’. It is understood that one of those arrested was Hongchi Xiao, a Chinese therapist running the paida lajin retreat. He promotes the controversial therapy as ‘a way of purging toxins from patients’ by slapping them or getting them to slap themselves. Last year, Hongchi was questioned by police in Australia after the death of a seven-year-old boy from Sydney who had attended one of his workshops.
The Swedish only antroposophical clinic “Vidarkliniken” has announced plans to lay off up to 17 out of 100 employees. Vidarkliniken is the only clinic or hospital in Sweden that has permission to use antroposophical “medicine” as a complement to evidence based treatments. The Swedish government decided in July to phase out this permission over five years.
The news of cutting staff also follows the clinic having received scathing criticism after an audit pointed out severe problems with documenting patient records and failure to advocate conventional medicine to patients. This in turn led to the clinic recently losing three important public contracts, which is cited as the direct reason for the cut back.
A ‘faith-healer’ who operated from Leicester, England, has had his nine-year prison sentence extended by five years as he has not paid back £613,500 conned from his victims. ‘However, the extension to Mohammed Ashrafi’s sentence could be cut if he pays back the missing cash. Ashrafi (51) was found guilty last year of 14 counts of fraud involving 18 victims, by falsely claiming that in return for payments for materials required for prayer, they would win the lottery, between January and April 2014. He called himself Kamal-Ji, and purported to be in spiritual contact with an Indian Saint, Sai Baba, with special powers to solve problems and financial difficulties.’
This science communication session will be held during the morning of the 18th November at the University of Alicante and addresses the two issues in the title as well as closing with the session:
Fecalmagnetism: the art of selling shit. A case study where two friends invented a pseudoscience just to see how far they could get with barefaced lies? The answer is highly disturbing.