Skeptigator
mightymjolnir
neuralgourmet
andyscathouse
dystressed
theodoersing
Andy Welfle
neuralgourmet
Ten Most Wanted Promoters of Pseudoscience
Posted by dystressed on November 16, 2008
I am a skeptoid fanboy. I will admit it. The podcast is a great resource for the beginner skeptics out there.
The recent October 28th podcast covered his list of the 10 most wanted celebrities who endorse harmful pseudoscience. Now I must specify that he does not want these people to be hurt or harmed, he simply wants people to be aware of how dangerous following these people can be.
There are figures on both the right and the left politically, but all are taken to task for the harmful ideas they promote. Guess who is number 1: Oprah Winfrey. A magazine I read about a year ago called Oprah the closest thing America has to a living Deity. All the more reason to take whatever she says with a truckload of salt.
The rest of the list:
- Oprah Winfrey - Jumping on every Alternative Bandwagon that comes along
- Jenny McCarthy - Anti-Vaccination
- Prince Charles - Alternative Medicine
- Bill Maher - Alternative Medicine
- Larry King - Bad Journalism
- Pamela Anderson - PETA
- Ben Stein - Comparing Science to Nazism, Creationism
- Joe Rogan - 9/11 Truther, et al.
- Chuck Norris - Christianity
- Montel Williams - psychics
I urge you to check this podcast out. It’s only about 10 minutes long to listen to and even faster to read.
November 19, 2008 at 7:34 pm
Thanks for the link, dystressed. I enjoyed the info.
November 24, 2008 at 2:10 am
I think we should do a similar top-ten list, except for websites. For instance, mercola.com or whale.to for quackery. Richard Hoagland’s EnterpriseMission.com for, well, too much to mention but let’s start with moon hoax conspiracy theories and the face on Mars… You get the idea. What would your Top Ten Pseudoscience Websites be?
November 28, 2008 at 12:34 pm
“Pamela Anderson - PETA”
Weak. I’m assuming that the issue is vivisection. Vivisection has advanced human knowledge of non-human animals. So what? Why kill millions of animals every year? Scientific non-human animal models will always differ from human models. This is why I hate science, the gigantic, expensive, soulless enterprise leading to viagra and cosmetics. Science is anti-life. It risks biosystems with space shuttles, genetic evolution with GMOs, and it kills everything it wants to know about. Want to know about ants like Edward O. Wilson? Kill 40,000 or so of them. It’s a pathological pursuit.
November 28, 2008 at 1:27 pm
If you hate science, you are in the wrong place Adam. Science is the reason modern society exists. Where would we be with plastic, genetic research, astrophysics, and everything else science provides? As for GMOs, pretty much all crops are genetically modified in some way. Advancing agriculture reduces poverty and hunger around the world.
Why don’t you actually follow the link to the podcast transcript and learn about Dunning’s condemnation of PETA before you spout off your beliefs?