James Randi 2011 Pigasus awards are here!

[Thor]

Excellent choices as per usual

These are this year’s “winners.”

• The Scientist Pigasus Award goes to NASA Engineer Richard B. Hoover, who recently announced for the third time in 14 years that he had found evidence of microscopic life in meteorites. Along with the crackpot Journal of Cosmology—a now-defunct publication founded in 2009 to publish articles advancing the scientifically unsupported idea that life began before the first stars formed and was spread throughout the early universe on meteors—Hoover pitched his warmed-over ideas to Fox News, an outlet not known for their attention to facts. Predictably, Fox News ran with the story, convincing many people that NASA had discovered extraterrestrial life.

• The Funder Pigasus Award goes to CVS/pharmacy, for their work to support the manufacturers of scam “homeopathic” medications who sell up to $870 million a year in quack remedies to U.S. consumers. Homeopathic remedies contain none of the active ingredient they claim, and homeopathy has been shown to be useless in randomized clinical trials. CVS/pharmacy sells these quack products in thousands of stores across the U.S., right alongside real medicine, with no warning to consumers. Instead of giving their customers the facts about homeopathy, CVS/pharmacy executives are cashing in themselves by offering their own store-brand of the popular homeopathic product oscillococcinum. Oscillococcinum is made by grinding up the liver of a duck, putting none of it onto tiny sugar pills—that’s right, none of it—and then advertising the plain sugar pills as an effective treatment for flu symptoms.

• The Media Pigasus Award goes to Dr. Mehmet Oz, who has done such a disservice to his TV viewers by promoting quack medical practices that he is now the first person to win a Pigasus two years in a row. Dr. Oz is a Harvard-educated cardiac physician who, through his syndicated TV show, has promoted faith healing, "energy medicine," and other quack theories that have no scientific basis. Oz has appeared on ABC News to give legitimacy to the claims of Brazilian faith healer “John of God,” who uses old carnival tricks to take money from the seriously ill. He's hosted Ayurvedic guru Yogi Cameron on his show to promote nonsense "tongue examination" as a way of diagnosing health problems. This year, he really went off the deep end. In March 2011, Dr. Oz endorsed "psychic" huckster and past Pigasus winner John Edward, who pretends to talk to dead people. Oz even suggested that bereaved families should visit psychic mediums to receive (faked) messages from their dead relatives as a form of grief counseling.

• The Performer Pigasus Award—this year for “Best Comeback”—goes to televangelist Peter Popoff. Popoff made millions in the 1980s by pretending to heal the sick and receive information about audience members directly from god. He went bankrupt in 1987 after JREF founder James Randi exposed him for using a secret earpiece to receive information about audience members from his wife. Now he’s back to prey on victims of the economic recession. In paid infomercials on BET, Popoff offers “supernatural debt relief” in exchange for offerings of hundreds or even thousands of dollars. This business is so lucrative that according to recent IRS documents, Popoff took in $23.5 million and paid himself and his immediate family more than $1 million in one year alone.

• The Refusal to Face Reality Award goes to Andrew Wakefield, the researcher who launched the modern anti-vaccine panic with unfounded statements linking the MMR vaccine with autism that were not borne out by any research, even his own. In 2010, The Lancet retracted his paper on the MMR vaccine, and this year the British medical journal BMJ called Wakefield’s paper an outright fraud, finding “clear evidence of falsification of data” and that “he sought to exploit the ensuing MMR scare for financial gain,” taking more than $674,000 from lawyers who intended to sue vaccine manufacturers. Yet Wakefield continues to ask the public to believe he is the victim. In a recent article in NaturalNews, Wakefield called the American Academy of Pediatrics and The Lancet “instruments of a state that I don't really want to be associated with.”

http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/...asus-2011.html

[Crazy Bacon Legs]

I really like James Randi a lot, but I hate reading things like this.

It makes me lose faith in humanity when I see how gullible people can be, coupled with how easily some other people take advantage of that gullibility.

Still, on the plus side, it's good to spread the word about these charlatans and hucksters. Perhaps someone here will learn something!

[troutman]

Originally Posted by Crazy Bacon Legs

Still, on the plus side, it's good to spread the word about these charlatans and hucksters. Perhaps someone here will learn something!

Not if Oprah has anything to say about it.

[peter12]

Peter Popoff makes me yearn for the return of crucifixion as a viable capital punishment.

[Crazy Bacon Legs]

Originally Posted by troutman

Not if Oprah has anything to say about it.

Point taken. All the good science in the world can't stand up to a media empire ruled by a person who believes in magic.

[Thor]

Originally Posted by peter12

Peter Popoff makes me yearn for the return of crucifixion as a viable capital punishment.

Interesting tidbit, Popoff is not allowed to spam his crap in the UK, so he circumvents them by using an Icelandic religious channel to broadcast into the UK.

Our Humanist group is pressuring the government and the station itself to ban him and stop another revenue stream of his.

Its beyond sick how this man scams people over and over again and no one stops him.

[Hemi-Cuda]

Originally Posted by Thor

Interesting tidbit, Popoff is not allowed to spam his crap in the UK, so he circumvents them by using an Icelandic religious channel to broadcast into the UK.

Our Humanist group is pressuring the government and the station itself to ban him and stop another revenue stream of his.

Its beyond sick how this man scams people over and over again and no one stops him.

if people still give him money after all that is known about how much of a scam artist he is, they deserve no empathy

[Thor]

That sad thing is his latest scam, the miracle spring water targets the poor who are desperate to find anything to help them escape their debts.

I don't agree in his case, he's been arrested and fined millions before, but yet he's doing this exact same thing again in the name of religious freedom.

[troutman]

Here is a unique reason to go to Las Vegas:



The Amaz!ng Meeting 2011

July 14-17, 2011
South Point Hotel, Casino & Spa, Las Vegas, NV

http://www.amazingmeeting.com/