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EDITOR: le canard noir

Posted by lecanardnoir

March 4th, 2009

Who am I?

Hi! I’m Andy Lewis, inventor of the Quackometer, and writer of the associated blog. The quackometer allows people to type a URL into a box and then be told whether the web page is full of quackery or not. The Quackometer goes away and examines the language used on the suspect web site and looks for the tell tale language of idiocy. It’s fun – and it gets me into lots of scrapes. As you might imagine, people test out pages onthe Daily Mail quite a lot. 


I write about the stuff I come across too. Firstly, it was just for laughs – but it has become a little more angry as I see the stupidity and arrogance of alternative medicine leading to harm and deceit. I get angry when quacks try to sue me for pointing out their nonsense. And this nonsense goes to the highest levels of our society too, with our future head of state, Prince Charles, currently selling bottles of magic detox juice to the gullible for ten pounds a pop. (See Duchy Originals). Yes, our future monarch is a cheap mountebank. And I think it is interesting to write about a society that is uncritical of this and allows it to happen. 

Why am I doing this?

The Daily Mail is an interesting conduit for quackery. I may not be fully convinced that this is always deliberate. Indeed, often the Mail writes some pretty sensible things about alternative medicine. Much more plausible, is that it just does not care about truth and accuracy. And maybe it likes to create that sense of fear and uncertainty that fosters its political agenda by undermining the single authority in the world that consistently produces reliable knowledge – science. Churnalism is largely at work at the Mail – the hasty reproduction of a bit of PR from some vested interest that ensures a whole load of free publicity is generated for some dodgy outfit or quack health company. 


What will I be writing about?

Well, I want to take apart those really daft quack stories that occasionally appear. I won’t be getting into all the health nonsense on the site – I have a life too. Take it that when you read ‘X causes cancer’, or ‘X does not cause cancer’ the Mail has got it wrong. No need for any deep analysis. But when things look interesting, I will post something up.
Toodlepip.

Categories: Housekeeping | Tags:

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2 Comments

  1. Tim Ireland March 4th, 2009 at 8:31 pm

    Welcome aboard.

    Do let me know immediately if you intersect with Nadine Dorries. I’m a big fan of her medical research, and I’d hate to miss any of it.

  2. ExPc March 5th, 2009 at 7:58 am

    Thanks le canard noir.
    Out of interest. Why the black duck in French?

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