My old pal Richard Saunders from Australia skyped me up (which sounds dirtier than it is) and we chatted about doomsday prophecies — 2012, mostly, but also all the endless failed predictions of years gone by — for his podcast The Skeptic Zone (you can grab the MP3 here too). It’s always fun to chat with Richard. We’ve known each other a long time (as you can tell by the picture of the two of us there — click to southernhemispherenate) and I think that helps.
I also gush a bit about the live stuff I’m doing with Fraser Cain on Google+, including astronomy news roundups every Thursday, and live video telescope viewing via webcams. My part starts at about 12:30 in, but you should listen to the whole thing. It’s a good podcast, and he has an adorable accent.
Most of the time, so-called "alternative medicine" is treated very gently by television news. I don’t know if that’s because they don’t want to tick off their viewers, or the reporters don’t look into it properly, or if they believe in it themselves. But no matter the reason, it’s always refreshing to see a show really tear into something like homeopathy. That’s precisely what the Australian program "Today Tonight" did recently:
The report featured such noted skeptics as Simon Singh, Richard Saunders, and James Randi, and made it very clear that homeopathy is just very expensive nonsense. I’m glad they didn’t make the report "balanced" by giving a lot of time to promoters of homeopathy; that’s not balance any more than giving time to someone who believes in storks delivering babies in a segment about infant health care.
Like many of the skeptic victories this year, this one comes from Australia, specifically the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), a government watchdog group that has legal authority over businesses. And they’ve exercised that authority: according to the Australian Skeptics (linked above), the ACCC has ordered Power Balance to
• remove misleading claims from their website and packaging
• publish advertising informing consumers that they made claims that could not be substantiated
• offer refunds to all consumers who feel they may have been misled and
• remove the words “performance technology” from the band itself.
Sweet.
I’ve written about similar bands before; basically, these are silicone wristbands, sometimes marketed with a hologram inserted into them which are "tuned to your body’s frequency", that manufacturers claim will help you in all sorts of manners including athletic performance, balance, stamina, and so on. Now, far be it from me to say that a product cannot possibly do what the manufacturers claims lest we need to erase everything we have learned about science, physics, and the Universe itself for the past three centuries, but I suspect these bracelets’ abilities to do anything beyond the placebo effect may be slightly exaggerated. And I’m glad the ACCC agrees.
Have you heard about these Power Bands, or Power Balance bracelets? The claims by the manufacturer and at countless demos are that these bands improve balance, flexibility, endurance, and strength by employing holograms which send frequencies that somehow interact with your body’s frequencies or electric field or glaven or some other undefinable manifestation.
Yeah. You can imagine what I think about that. And if you can’t, I’ll be clear: that claim is complete nonsense. Literally, it makes no sense. Holograms don’t emit anything, frequency or otherwise; there’s no such thing as your body’s frequency; and there’s no way inside the laws of physics that a rubber band with a cheap plastic hologram in it can affect your body, unless a) you’re allergic to rubber, or 2) it hits you at meteoric velocities.
We clear? OK.
So why on Earth would such a product be sold with a University logo on it? Yet, that’s what’s happening with the University of Colorado, among other institutions. Power Bands are being sold with the CU logo on them.
Now let me be careful here. These bands are being sold by the Power Force company online, as well as by the CU Athletic Department. The Athletic Department is separate from the University itself, and is the entity that licenses the logo used ("Ralphie" the buffalo).
Still, unsurprisingly, some local skeptics have taken exception to this, and have contacted the University about it. What did surprise me was how dismissively they were rebuffed. (more…)
Shortly after Dragon*Con, my friend and Aussie skeptic Richard Saunders came to Boulder and stayed with us for a few days. We hiked, and hung out, and chatted, and… something else. What was it again?
Oh yeah! He interviewed me for his podcast, The Skeptic Zone. We talked about Saturn, citizen science, the good old days of skepticism, and of course "Bad Universe". Give it a listen! And you can grab the MP3 directly here.
While I was at The Amaz!ng Meeting 8 in Las Vegas in July, I was interviewed by my friends Richard Saunders and Rachael Dunlop from The Skeptic Zone, the premier critical thinking podcast in Australia.
We talked about TAM Oz, Minties, telescopes, WIMPs and MACHOs, the LHC, Brian Cox, and Gia Milinovitch, and my no-longer Sooper Sekrit Project.
Sometimes, news comes pouring in to Bad Astronomy HQ, and I am but a man, so I can’t keep up (writing about Saturn’s moons and giant galactic panoramas and big weird Scandinavian spinny thingies keep me pretty busy, y’know).
Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He's written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic and fights the abuse of science, but his true love is praising the wonders of real science.
The original BA site (with the Moon Hoax debunking, movie reviews, and all that) can be found here.
Contact me: The Bad Astronomer "at" gmail "dot" com
"If things worked the way I wanted them to, any reporter about to do another 'sensational' story on deadly meteors would consult this volume, and bang! common sense would find its way into the news. How strange would that world be?" -- Adam Savage, Mythbusters
"Reading this book is like getting punched in the face by Carl Sagan. Frightening, but oddly exhilarating." -- Daniel H. Wilson, author of How to Survive a Robot Uprising
My old pal Richard Saunders from Australia skyped me up (which sounds dirtier than it is) and we chatted about doomsday prophecies — 2012, mostly, but also all the endless failed predictions of years gone by — for his podcast The Skeptic Zone (you can grab the MP3 here too). It’s always fun to chat with Richard. We’ve known each other a long time (as you can tell by the picture of the two of us there — click to southernhemispherenate) and I think that helps.
