10 February 2012 by John Underhay
It is difficult to determine the number of people who use Complementary and Alternative treatments. CAM practitioners and supporters do their best to make the numbers as high as possible so they can make the argument that the public demands their services. One of the methods they use to inflate the numbers is to include [...]
Posted in Medicine9 Comments
03 January 2012 by Marion Kilgour
I think that because water is so ubiquitous, and, let’s face it, pretty awesome all by itself (it expands as it freezes!) people like to use it as the basis for their made up chemistry. An ad for a co-worker selling his unused ScaleHammer recently appeared on the company classifieds. So, I looked up the [...]
Posted in Canada, Pseudoscience, Skepticism8 Comments
09 December 2011 by Marion Kilgour
Most of the cell phone / Wi-Fi hysteria seems to me like it’s been coming from the eastern provinces, although Edmonton has had some short-lived and ineffective campaigns to get Wi-Fi out of schools. But, this summer I got my first taste of local activism about cell towers. Initially, I was on board with the [...]
Posted in Alberta, Health Policy, Pseudoscience, Skepticism15 Comments
07 December 2011 by Richelle McCullough
Image credit: B Tal Near my house in Winnipeg, there’s a summertime Farmer’s Market that I used to go to every weekend to buy fresh local fruits, vegetables and honey. I grew up in rural farming communities and come from a long line of farmers, so I like supporting the little guys who still run family [...]
Posted in Alternative Medicine, Diet and Nutrition, Prairies15 Comments
30 November 2011 by Richelle McCullough
Source There has been much abuzz about “pox parties” – the practice of parents getting a bunch of unvaccinated kids together with an infected one (pick one, really, though chicken pox is the focus of the recent article in Time) in the hope that their little sweethearts become ill and therefore “naturally” immune to the [...]
Posted in Alternative Medicine, Skepticism, Vaccines79 Comments
06 September 2011 by John Underhay
According to the Canadian Association of Naturopathic Doctors (ND), there are approximately 1500 NDs practising in Canada. The Council on Naturopathic Medical Education (CNME) is the accreditation body for NDs and lists the following schools: The Boucher Institute of Naturopathic Medicine (New Westminster, British Columbia) The Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine (Toronto, Ontario) The [...]
Posted in Alternative Medicine, Canada118 Comments
30 August 2011 by Marion Kilgour
Recently, I stopped adding salt to my water for cooking pasta. I had always been told by my mother that adding salt makes the water boil faster…but everything seemed to be taking the same amount of time. This seemed like something I hadn’t thought about before but could now easily apply some critical thinking to. [...]
Posted in Critical Thinking, Diet and Nutrition, Science14 Comments
11 August 2011 by Dianne Sousa
Some time ago, Skeptic North reviewed an episode of CBC’s Marketplace that focused on homeopathy. The program featured a parent that opted to use homeopathic vaccines instead of real vaccines. I suspected that the parent was genuinely misinformed about vaccines and homeopathy, and noted in the comments that since as a result of the program, [...]
Posted in Alternative Medicine, Canada, Featured, Health Policy, Medicinal Advertising, Pseudoscience, Skepticism12 Comments
14 January 2011 by Kim Hebert
Benefiting from the Atlantic Time Zone, I got to be one of the first to watch CBC Marketplace on Friday night (darn you, Newfoundland!) where they covered the topic of homeopathy. Here are my impressions. First, I want to praise Marketplace for not offering false balance on the issue. Homeopathy is not something about which [...]
Posted in Alternative Medicine, Canada, Featured, Health, Media, Pseudoscience, Reviews37 Comments
25 October 2010 by Erik Davis
Just in time for Halloween, I’ll be presenting a five-part series on Magical Thinking that will run from Monday – Friday of this week, picking up on the theme of my talk at Skepticamp Toronto last weekend. The first instalment is below: Toward an Ontology of Magical Thinking A few months ago, I wrote an [...]
Posted in Cognition, Critical Thinking, Skepticism8 Comments
