/oss/taxonomy/term/2910/all en /oss/article/history/hal-healer-and-others-his-ilk <p>A large crowd surrounded Hal the Healer's platform in the middle 1800s. Before beginning, Hal signaled his band to strike up a lively tune. Why? Because Hal was preparing to pull a tooth and the music was needed to drown out the screams of the unfortunate patient!</p> Sat, 31 Jul 2021 01:32:02 +0000 Joe Schwarcz PhD 8795 at /oss /oss/article/pseudoscience/thetahealingr-money-youll-spend-never-existed <p>It must have looked like they were testing for telepathy. One self-described healer and their patient, sitting face to face, were each wearing what I would describe as a rugby helmet covered in electrodes, the tangle of cables coming off of the skull cap looking like a cyberpunk ponytail.</p> <p>This strange experiment was published in 2016. The goal? To see if the central claim of a method called ThetaHealing® could be confirmed by looking at real-time brain activity.</p> Thu, 01 Aug 2019 16:00:00 +0000 Jonathan Jarry M.Sc. 7844 at /oss /oss/article/quackery/oprah-president <p><span>The U.S. is abuzz with chatter about Oprah for President. She makes a thoughtful, rousing, captivating speech at the Golden Globe Awards and people are ready to usher her into the Oval Office. But let’s not fling that door open quite yet, not before taking a look at the candidate’s ability to exercise sound judgement. Although there are several instances I could point out where Oprah’s judgement was suspect, her having devoted a program to the antics of “John of God” is particularly troublesome.</span></p> Thu, 11 Jan 2018 18:48:08 +0000 Joe Schwarcz PhD 6880 at /oss