London Skeptics in the Pub

How herpes got its stigma - the great aciclovir scam

https://herpes.org.uk/how-herpes-got-its-stigma/

How herpes got its stigma - Herpes Viruses Association “It is easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.” – Mark Twain You can download a PDF of this article. An article by Nigel Scott For anyone in the twenty first century it is hard to believe that there was a time when ‘herpes’ was not a stigmatised and […]

I'll just leave this here for you...

https://twitter.com/i/status/1463220147993329670

Hemant Mehta on Twitter “End Times preacher Sharon Gilbert says that an alien imitated her husband, and then it tried to have s*x with her, and then it claimed to be Xerxes, and then Jesus got involved, and then the alien turned out to be a reptile with a posse of gargoyles. https://t.co/aBqC2IMSqn”

A balanced look at reports of women being spiked with needles in clubs

https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxdenq/heres-what-we-know-about-reports-of-women-being-spiked-with-needles-in-uk-clubs

Here's What We Know About Reports of Women Being 'Spiked With Needles' in UK Clubs As police forces investigate reports of women being victims of "spiking injections" and the Home Secretary requests an urgent update, what is actually going on?

Goop is at it again. More non-science nonsense from Paltrow.

https://news.yahoo.com/goop-supplement-boost-womens-s*x-122155117.html?soc_src=social-sh&soc_trk=tw&tsrc=twtr&guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly90LmNvLw&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAM8ZPbL3n5Lc3_aPl1l7uea8dBbClqmy9S4gMZrbujg7SrQfnaCTsF2DMRRvfccmNj_6HsI-ijkQO6IMW3wfwOmvqylN_BxkbQO-Ua-XKdrUqla0Ow-qBg8k70pNGRsDADpocFd4Y91WWzbhUaTIQuM14ftWjEv-UntJmhzrzUng

If you need a laugh this morning... so many layers of stupid...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-58810977

US man sues psychic who 'promised to remove ex-girlfriend curse' Mauro Restrepo alleges Sophia Adams told him his marriage was cursed and she could save it for $5,100.

Far-right pseudo-history and pseudo-archeology.

https://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2021/09/28/the-celtics/

Fascist Fantasies and the Celts If you’ve been spending any time in the Gaelic or Gaelic-adjacent parts of Twitter over the last few days, you’ve probably been made unpleasantly aware of a filmmaker in the United States who has b…

This year's Ignobel Awards go to ...

https://www.improbable.com/2021-ceremony/winners/

Past Ig Winners Ig® Nobel Prize Winners For achievements that first make people LAUGH then make them THINK Winners by year: 2021 : 2020 : 2019 : 2018 : 2017 : 2016 2015 : 2014 : 2013 : 2012 : 2011 2010 : 2009 : 20…

This is a good piece for Skeptics who want to challenge the white right claims that history is being 'rewritten' - ie the bits they'd rather ignore are being put back in.

https://brokenbottleboy.substack.com/p/tombs-tantrums-and-daddy-churchill?justPublished=true

Tombs, tantrums, and daddy Churchill: The Times and Telegraph endorse another 'war on woke' to protect their childish dreams... You see they have history while you have 'narratives'.

Excellent thread debunking Western racist assumptions about spicy food.

https://twitter.com/Raykris1/status/1430414406995697664

Krishnendu Ray on Twitter “1. Spices and Meat Surprisingly, flawed opinions persist about the use of spices in Early Modern Europe. Apparently it was to cover the smell of rotting flesh or to compensate for poor quality meat. I read two instances recently.”

Many influential studies of identical twins reared apart are very flawed.
https://web.archive.org/web/20201130032219/http://jayjoseph.net/yahoo_site_admin/assets/docs/2020_Jay_Joseph_Time_to_Radically_Reevaluate_Reared_Apart_Twin_Studies_PDF.235101623.pdf

web.archive.org

A bit more skeptical history for you, this time about Gawain and The Green Knight (plus pics of Dev Patel). "People tend to think that “medieval literature didn’t have a sense of subjectivity and self-consciousness,” that people living in the European Middle Ages didn’t think about themselves and their place in the world. But that’s just not true."

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/green-knight-dev-patel-medieval-literature-180978340/?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=socialmedia

'The Green Knight' Adopts a Medieval Approach to 'Modern' Problems A new film starring Dev Patel as Gawain feels more like a psychological thriller than a period drama

A historian explains why people shouldn't bang on about the Dark Ages when they know nothing about this term that was essentially invented as propaganda. Not so Dark.

https://going-medieval.com/2017/05/26/theres-no-such-thing-as-the-dark-ages-but-ok/

There’s no such thing as the ‘Dark Ages’, but OK As a very serious adult, with a respectable career and life, and a healthy ability to let petty s**t slide, I spent much too much time last week arguing with strangers on the internet who believe i…

Oh dear. Colgate really has lost the plot with its Elixir Cool Detox toothpaste with charcoal and coconut extract, and 'cooling technology'. Exactly what and how is it detoxing? And it's £9 for 80ml. Caveat emptor.

The real and serious risks of 'alternative' medicine and treatments.

https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-risks-associated-with-alternative-medicine/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-risks-associated-with-alternative-medicine&fbclid=IwAR3DGQDf2TW_LQ6FAy0U3vD8GQXDuoNcHHTbP1YrYXjYVlxs_gSVeAdbBno

The risks associated with alternative medicine | Science-Based Medicine Alternative medicine is big business. While it may have the image of small companies, personalized treatments, and independent practitioners, it is a multi-billion dollar industry that is growing rapi

Some handy facts to counter the dangerous idiocy that is the argument that most people survived the Black Death so we don't need Covid vaccines.

https://going-medieval.com/2021/06/18/i-assure-you-the-black-death-was-actually-bad/

I assure you, the Black Death was actually bad I cannot believe I am about to write this, after a year and change of saying that we really don’t need to keep comparing COVID to the Black Death, which was by all estimates the worst pandemic the …

Good article on why the heroes of New Atheism turned out to be vile old white men whining about their loss of privilege and spewing hate on everyone else.

https://www.salon.com/2021/06/05/how-the-new-atheists-merged-with-the-far-right-a-story-of-intellectual-grift-and-abject-surrender/

Godless grifters: How the New Atheists merged with the far right What once seemed like a bracing intellectual movement has degenerated into a pack of abusive, small-minded bigots

Debunking some myths about science and knowledge in the so-called Dark Ages.

https://going-medieval.com/2020/07/02/if-youre-going-to-talk-about-the-dark-ages-you-had-better-be-right/

If you’re going to talk about the Dark Ages, you had better be right. Because I am absolutely responsible for all of my own problems, my lovely readers often send me bad medieval takes in order to watch me get mad. This is effective. Today, one of my fantastic Patreo…

Something to bear in mind for Skeptics meetings, real or virtual 😁

https://twitter.com/tarunkhaitan/status/1393124610590351361

Tarunabh Khaitan on Twitter “How to be a good conference participant: Hat tip: ”

Gwyneth Paltrow's exploding va**na candle. If yours smells like that, explosion is the least of your worries.

https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2021/05/19/gwyneth-paltrow-this-smells-like-my-va**na-candle-explosion-lawsuit/

Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop sued after man ‘engulfed’ in va**na-scented flames Gwyneth Paltrow is being sued by a Texas man after his "This Smells Like My Va**na" candle allegedly "exploded" in his bedroom.

I'm loooking forward to the 'aliens caused Covid' conspiracy theories.

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/05/17/politics/ufo-pentagon-explainer/index.html

What we know about UFOs: How the Pentagon has handled reported sightings, mysterious videos and more For years, the US government largely ignored reports of mysterious flying objects seen moving through restricted military airspace but it is now slowly beginning to acknowledge that UFOs, which the Pentagon refers to as unidentified aerial phenomena, are real.

A skeptical take on breaking up Big Tech from Skeptifriend James O'Malley
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jp07mvjt5s

Breaking Up Big Tech Doesn't Fix Anything - My speech to the Cambridge Union I spoke to the Cambridge Union debating society opposing the proposition "The House would break up Big Tech", alongside a bunch of far more qualified and imp...

Really good doc on the history of vaccination/variolation and anti-vax.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/m000w6s7/extra-life-a-short-history-of-living-longer

Extra Life: A Short History of Living Longer The science and medical innovations that conquered some of the world’s deadliest diseases.

"Our rigorous assessment of the best available evidence finds that there is insufficient evidence to recommend these supplements for weight loss."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-57039848

Complementary medicines for weight loss not justified, study suggests Some complementary medicines result in marginal weight loss but do not benefit health, study suggests.