It’s always a bit sad to see one of your childhood idols reduced to hucksterism. Yet such appears to be the case with the legendary Eric Dickerson, who once performed wondrous feats for my beloved Indianapolis Colts. Now years removed from the limelight, Dickerson today earns a living by peddling belts that purport to unclump […]
Entries Tagged as 'pseudoscience'
A Matlock Moment
February 28th, 2012 · 2 Comments
I’m a sucker for a tale in which the American legal system is asked to rule on the legitimacy of a medical treatment. No matter how dubious a quack’s product, he or she can always scrounge up satisfied customers to attest to its power, as well as a few expert witnesses who will say almost […]
Tags:Dinshah Ghadiali·gadgets·law·medicine·pseudoscience·Spectro-Chrome
The Flipside of Nonsense
November 21st, 2011 · 8 Comments
There is an interracial romance at the heart of my next book, so I’ve spent appreciable time researching the question of how such couples were regarded in the early 1970s. As is typically the case, that line of inquiry has piqued my interest in a tangential matter: the creation of anti-miscegenation laws specifically targeted at […]
Tags:California·law·Philippines·pseudoscience·racism·Washington
Signifying Nothing
November 29th, 2010 · 3 Comments
The human rays of sunshine above are academics devoted to the study of juche, the nonsensical North Korean ideology that stresses self-reliance above all else. You would think that men and women in possession of advanced degrees would recognize the flaws in an economic theory that denies the basic sociability of our species—or, at the […]
Tags:dictatorship·economics·education·juche·Mongolia·North Korea·pseudoscience
Give Us Your Cheap Labor
September 13th, 2010 · Comments Off on Give Us Your Cheap Labor
There’s a classic scene at the beginning of The Godfather II in which young Vito Andolini passes through Ellis Island’s immigration line. It is there that, due to an immigration officer’s carelessness, he is given the mistaken surname of Corleone, which is actually the village of his birth. Moments later, frightened young Vito is informed […]
Tags:immigration·labor·movies·pseudoscience·racism·The Godfather II
Fleet Street’s Dubious Science
August 27th, 2010 · Comments Off on Fleet Street’s Dubious Science
Apologies for the late start to the day, but Microkhan Jr. decided to rob the clan of some much-needed sleep in the wee hours. Unable to get back to the Sandman’s realm once the kid had been pacified, I passed the time by catching up on The World at War. Lots of good stuff there, […]
Tags:Britain·pseudoscience·racism·The World at War·TV·World War II
Ice Van Wyck
July 9th, 2010 · 7 Comments
At the end of Wednesday’s post about one of the least heralded pioneers of refrigeration, we noted that the “ice lobby” had been instrumental in frustrating John Gorrie’s dreams of freezing water via mechanical means. This notion struck us as rather humorous since we can scarcely think of a less valuable commodity these days than […]
Tags:Charles W. Morse·crime·economics·Ice Trust·New York City·politics·pseudoscience
First, Do No Harm
April 28th, 2010 · Comments Off on First, Do No Harm
While we’re sensitive to the fact that millions of people trust folk cures more than modern remedies, stories like this one make us question whether shamanism deserves to survive in the post-antibiotics age: A couple in Samoa ,who perform traditional healing, have been found guilty of causing actual bodily harm, but had charges of manslaughter […]
Tags:medicine·pseudoscience·public health·Samoa·South Africa·witchcraft
The Liver Knows Best
March 25th, 2010 · 1 Comment
Of all the various methods that mankind has devised to foretell the future, none is quite as bizarre as the reading of entrails. We have no idea who first came up with the idea that a deceased animal’s innards could cast light on upcoming events, but the practice certainly dates back to the heyday of […]
Tags:ancient history·anthropology·Ethiopia·haruspicy·pseudoscience·religion·Roman Empire
The Ride Og Wishes He Had
February 19th, 2010 · 2 Comments
We realize we should stop being surprised by the scientific illiteracy of our countrymen, but we just couldn’t let this loopy tidbit pass without notice: Did humans live at the same time as the dinosaurs? Three in ten Texas voters agree with that statement; 41 percent disagree, and 30 percent don’t know. We have a […]
Tags:Creation Museum·creationism·dinosaurs·evolution·Kansas·pseudoscience
Fuel for a Growing Nation
February 12th, 2010 · 2 Comments
The lamentable advent of Bud Select 55 got us thinking about the history of nutritional science—or, rather, the ways in which dodgy scientific claims have been used to peddle all manner of food products. We’re of a mind that such science-y pitches do an excellent job of reflecting cultural neuroses. So just as today we’re […]
A Heyday Down East
January 26th, 2010 · Comments Off on A Heyday Down East
Whenever we drive through a mid-sized American town that has obviously seen better days, we wonder what industry built the once stately homes that have fallen into gentle disrepair. In most cases, it seems, such towns have fallen victim to the decline in manufacturing—Waterbury’s reign as “Brass City,” for example, certainly seems like a distant […]
The Toothache Glyph
December 18th, 2009 · 2 Comments
With all the 2012 hooey certain to kick into ever-higher gear over the coming months, it’s worth taking a look back at how we learned of the Mayans’ paranoia in the first place. That means checking in with one of the great heroes of hieroglyphics decipherment, Tatiana Proskouriakoff, who first figured out that Mayan stelae […]
Tags:hieroglyphics·language·Maya·pseudoscience·Tatiana Proskouriakoff
Alchemy on Shaolin
November 23rd, 2009 · 1 Comment
In terms of sheer quixoticism, the quest for kitchen diamonds ranks mighty high. Scores of swindlers, loons, and fabulists have long claimed to know the secret of manufacturing a girl’s best friend, using little more than lumps of charcoal and common ovens. (Peanut butter figures heavily in our favorite tongue-in-cheek recipe.) As with most alchemical […]
The Hilarity of Specificity
November 19th, 2009 · 3 Comments
Upon learning about the opening of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Me., we felt compelled to spend a pleasant few minutes going over the latest in Sasquatch research. What we find most entertaining about this field is not its sheer uselessness, but rather the seriousness of its tone. As demonstrated by the chart above, […]
Bumps Make the Man
September 10th, 2009 · 4 Comments
Staying on yesterday’s Black Hawk theme, we found a major scientific curio related to the Sauk chief: an 1838 account of Black Hawk’s phrenological characteristics, published in the not-so-renowned American Phrenological Journal and Miscellany. We’re big lovers of old-time junk science, and this paper is chock full of such wrongheaded (though utterly sincere) treats. One […]
Tags:Black Hawk·Native Americans·neuroscience·phrenology·pseudoscience
Crack Your Back, Take Your Jack
May 7th, 2009 · Comments Off on Crack Your Back, Take Your Jack
British science writer Simon Singh is no fan of chiropractors. In fact, he thinks the vast majority of what they do is pure quackery, and he spends a fair chunk of his book Trick or Treatment? making that abundantly clear. Spinal adjustments that can alleviate a range of ailments? Pshaw, says Singh (as does Microkhan). […]
“A Crushing Insult”
April 28th, 2009 · Comments Off on “A Crushing Insult”
In today’s edition of Now the Hell Will Start Extras Month, we’re going to delve into one of the book‘s main themes: Military segregation during World War II. Time and again in the course of my research, I was struck by the virulence of Jim Crow attitudes within our nation’s armed forces. Despite the desperate […]
Tags:Now the Hell Will Start·NtHWS Extras Month·politics·pseudoscience·World War II
The “Threat” of Broader Faces
April 20th, 2009 · 4 Comments
A century ago, the Dillingham Commission was charged with investigating the societal impact of immigration, particularly from Eastern and Southern Europe. The Congressional panel duly churned out a 41-volume report that, for all its regal language and intricate graphs, contains some of the vilest pseudoscientific drivel ever committed to print. Of particular interest to Microkhan […]
Tags:Dillingham Commission·Franz Boas·immigration·pseudoscience