Quack Quack Books

My wife and I picked up this book at an outlet mall. We were going through a "sale" bin, and this one jumped out at me because of the title. It's full of amazingly true facts--the kind of things that make great dinner conversation, tidbits for speeches and presentations, and that kind of thing. It's out of print now, so if you come across a copy, I highly recommend picking it up for your library.

I picked this book up as a birthday present not long after we had a bit of an incident in a local hospital, involving a 17cm pair of scissors being left inside some poor woman after surgery. Bet there's a scrub nurse going around saying "Scissors... Scissors..." somewhere!

Youngson and Schott have put together a very interesting and, let's face it, pretty damning picture of the medical profession, in ancient, mediaeval and recent times. It starts with a review of the high-technology wizardry that has been flogged off over the years, and moves through a variety of strange and often sickening stories. Some of these stories - like the concept of 'Blue Light Healing" - are just plain weird and quite funny, whilst others - like the stories of lobotomy and the thalidomide tragedy - are quite depressing.

I'm a medical student. Whilst reading this didn't exactly put me off my course, it certainly gives pause for thought. Not a light read, but very, very interesting.

The Little Buds series, of which this book is a part, contains DVDs, CDs and books all with a holistic view of learning; they teach Christian virtues along with counting and phonics. The author says it's "like a Christian Sesame Street." This book, Quack Quack Polka, was written to highlight the letter 'Q'.

It offers an interactive rhyme founded on Psalm 139:14: "I will praise Thee for I am fearfully and wonderfully made!" While the Scripture is quoted only once at the back of the book (with reference), the poem is actually repeated three times in the book. The second time is meant to be read quickly and the third time quietly. The last page encourages readers to shout the final verse of the poem: "I'm so happy how God made me!"

The illustrations by Laura Dreyer are bold and playful. They provide much interest without too many details.

What I Like: My kids love this book! I like that it's colorful and sturdy. The size is nice, 7 x 7". Also, it teaches a great lesson: kids should be just who God made them to be and allow others to be who God made them to be.

What I Dislike: The subtitle of the book is "A fun tune to say you are wonderfully made," but if you're not familiar with the Little Buds series, you won't know the tune. It's not provided with the book, nor is there any mention on the book about the correlation. Chanting works just fine for us!

Overall Rating: Very Good.

Tanya -- Christian Children's Book Review

Today's scientists face a bewildering array of standards they should adopt to ensure effective communication across different formats (different journals, books, and electronic media). This guide helps authors recognize which symbols have the IUPAC impramatur and which should be avoided for clarity. This guide still has deficiencies. For example, it has very few guidelines for the different arrows employed to denote different sorts of reactions. Different usages are common in the literature, and it would be best if IUPAC would unify the field.

what a bad gift I received with this book. I wanted to give it 0 stars.

I love Sylvia's book.....not to heavy and deep, altho a serious topic! It
met my expectations.

It's a brand-new season, so what does that tell you? Sylvia's back with a slew of her "books." Do you actually think she pens 250+++ page ORIGINAL books EVERY four weeks? The woman can barely string two cohesive sentences together! Louise Hay's "Hay House" (Sylvia's idiotic publisher,) is only too happy to slap her name and mug on another one of their recycled concoctions because they know that the masses will run out in droves; only to hear how Sylvia has retrogressed further to the pits of blatant stupidity! To borrow the words of Mr. Bill Cosby, "COME ON PEOPLE." As far as I'm concerned, this cheat is nothing more than a useless, wanna-be clairvoyant.

"What amazes me more than anything is that this animal is allowed not only to continue raping her victims, but that she is allowed to walk the streets and sleep peacefully at night," said by one of Sylvia's thousands of unhappy clients, in an article detailed on the informative Stop Sylvia Browne site. How in the world can Sylvia Crooked Browne keep "writing" these ludicrous books and cook up lie after lie after lie? Doesn't this woman have a conscience? Doesn't she see all the hurt that she has caused? Doesn't she care about anything besides The All Mighty Buck? Of course, I am being facetious. Because, anyone with a modicum of compassion knows that these are all rhetorical questions; we all know that the answer is a very loud and resounding NO!

But really, this is not just about her books. Just about everything this woman does is dishonest and illegal. From the lies she tells to her unsuspecting clients to claiming that she is tax-exempt so she can screw Uncle Sam! Oh yeah, she also claims she's a "church" and a "corporation." I do not know what is more dangerous; this woman's complete and total nerve or her blatant dementia! Perhaps it's a tossup!

How can the Feds let her get away with this? I have absolutely no idea. Better question, why hasn't any Major US Media Outlet investigated her? 60 Minutes is world renowned for their investigations, why haven't they reported on Sylvia and her tricks? Perhaps because Sylvia's special talk show, Montel, is produced by CBS? Although, from what I have been told, not for long; his show is getting the axe, next year!

It makes me absolutely furious that Sylvia has made millions and millions of dollars off of innocent people. And she has zero compassion. She is such a cold and heartless person. When she sees grieving people in need of help and love all this greedy witch sees is Dollar Signs! This is certainly not the way a spiritual advisor behaves. Perhaps Sylvia should re-read "Spiritual Advising for Dummies" again?

I know that sooner or later the truth will catch up to Sylvia Browne though. It may not be today or tomorrow, but eventually it will catch up to her. How can I be so sure? Anyone that arrogant and that incredibly ignorant always falls hard.

This book is a basic review of alleged secret societies in history and the present. The author also rails against the New World Order concept of global government but never explains why that would be a bad thing, considering the present organization of human cultures has failed so miserably in attaining peace among peoples and increasing the quality of life and pursuit of happiness for all human beings. I get the impression that this author is a money machine, phony in her beliefs on "channeling," more or less a lightweigth who should be ignored.

I had never read a Sylvia Brown book before so I had no particular expectations as to what I would find. Unfortunately, I was disappointed. The entire book read like a bad Wikipedia article. There was little to no documentation, the sources she does cite are secondary and of questionable merit. Stunningly her publisher/editor had the nerve to refer to"Sylvia's research," This research could be compared with a high school or college freshman English paper. Her ability to churn out bestselling books assembly line style appears to reflect her skill in writing in a style that consistently attracts a specific audience and fan base. Despite her writing style it is still beguiling as to why she has such large following and even her own church. (despite her criticism of organized religion) The most ridiculous part of her book is where she claims to uncover a secret meta-society that controls all the other groups. In her "extensive" research she has found no one who has documented or even mentioned this group called the "Secret Coalition for American Nationalism" or SCAN. All her "research" and all the "web sites" she visited talked about every society but this one. Her only source of information about this organization is her imaginary friend Francine or as her editor puts it "her amazing communication with her spirit guide Francine." Conveniently this source cannot be confirmed or verified by anyone else. I wonder if I were to write a research paper on SCAN how I would cite Francine as a source. I mean if I was using the Chicago Manual of Style would it be a personal conversation with a ghost or some type of correspondence. Perhaps it would be a conversation with yourself or talking to yourself:

---Francine (imaginary friend or delusional discussion) with the author November 2005.

Anyway, this book is a waste of trees.

In the name of science, you will try to prove with propagande;
if you really want to decode how junk scientifics manipulate the world: go http://nomorefakenews.com and do not buy this junk BOOK!

Junk Science Judo Exposes the non-critical nature of journalists and politicians towards "science." Once clothed in the garb of "science" any and all claims are relayed with breathless hysteria and stated with the sort of dogmatic certainty that would make the pope nervous. Of course, with each and every one of these claims, immediate action is necessary and litigation and new laws are rushed through with dramatic, life saving urgency. The reality is that one or even two scientific studies isn't enough to base legislation on. That's where the ever so handy precautionary principle comes in. If it MIGHT be harmful, it needs to be outlawed. Like DDT. Who cares about millions of Africans dying of malaria? DDT might (though there is little or no actual proof) be harmful to waterfowl!

Haven't read the book, but I have heard of Milloy and many of the other "experts" out there trying to protect us from "junk science" (I have read Milloy's website extensively, this is apparently more of the same). Sure, there's a lot of actual bad science out there, but the term "junk" only seems to be applied when someone is trying to knock down good science in the name of corporate (or religious) interests. If you still want to read this book, do so with the understanding that it was written with an agenda. You might be better off reading someone like Sagan (The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark) to help you in your journey towards a true understanding of science.

If you are unaware that most of what is broadcast as fact is really only Theoretic because even when a scientific study has been done but not repilicated it is still only someone's theory, this book will be an eye opener. As another author has said, "There are statistics, statistic and damned lies." On the other hand if you are not "up" for having your pet theory debunked as junk science better not read this book.

Whether you are a newbie in science, or do research, Milloy's work is exceptionally relevant, and at the same time intensely interesting.

Sadly, there seem to be very few people doing exactly what is needed in this growing area of scientific vandalism, and I applaud Milloy's courage in writing this work and others on the same or similar topic. He shows great creativity in the style and format used to write this work. It is exceptionally interesting to read, and captivates. My copy was on my office desk for exactly three days, and then without a routing list made it way through some of the science staff.

I wish I had kept the statistics on this, and could plot the exact point that this work seeded an intense discussion. Perhaps a critical mass of people had been reached, and the fallout was exceptional. I suppose it will simply take more time as more and more people read, and understand the difficulties Milloy cites. It would be a shame to re-live the problems of yesteryear, and with Milloy showing the problems before they become epidemic, a double shame.

Awareness if so very difficult to acquire, but Milloy does help open eyes. I would heartily recommend this book.

...for writing a science based book to combat the misinformation handed out by Jenny McCarthy, Generation Rescue,DAN!, etc. As a parent of a child with autism, I hope that all parents of newly diagnosed children with autism will read this book and stay away from the "Cure/Recovery" merry-go-round. Too many children have been subjected to years of intrusive and sometimes dangerous treatments, and too many families have gone bankrupt trying to pay for treatments, such as Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy, that have no scientific basis.

The Cure/Recovery merry-go-round can be very difficult to get off, there's always something more that you should do, or you didn't do enough of, or you didn't do correctly. I encourage new parents not to even get on that merry-go-round, your child deserves more than that. They deserve treatments that have been scientifically proven, they don't deserve experimentation.

And the rest of the population deserves to be protected from deadly diseases by vaccines that have been scientifically proven, without the endless propaganda of the anti-vaccine groups.

I really enjoyed this book (though I enjoyed his biography of Maurice Hilleman more). I started going to online discussion groups when we got our first modem over fourteen years ago (I still chuckle at the responses about "dyslexia" I got when I asked about "dyspraxia", which is what my oldest child was diagnosed with in 1991). As I moved around on Compuserve, briefly on Usenet, and on the Apraxia-Kids listserv, I saw these events unfold.

At first I could simply say "No, vaccines are not the cause of apraxia/dyspraxia, my kid had his seizures before any vaccine"... and it would be accepted and we would go on discussing insurance and school issues. Then "they" came, and "they" would not take "no" for an answer. "They" would send nasty-grams if anyone challenged anything they wrote. One tried to get me booted from the listserv just because I tried to explain that the MMR vaccine never contained mercury (a sure sign that someone does not know the issues is when he/she says "the thimerosal in MMR").

Also "they" started to promote all sorts of cures. I spoke against craniosacral and essential oils, and received nasty-grams that I had a closed mine (in frustration I told her to go bother the writers of paper saying that BC Health should not fund craniosacral therapy). Then I wrote an email to the group trying to explain that chelation was a "bad idea"... lots of nasty grams, including one telling me I was dangerous!

I found out from someone else that one of "them" was actually employed by a prominent DAN! doctor who sold the stuff she was promoting. So I left.

Just a couple of months later Roy Kerry killed a kid through chelation just because he was autistic. The interesting thing is that the owner and the moderator of the listserv do not live far from where that happened.

I was tempted to sign back up to see what the reaction was, but I resisted. I went on with my life. That support group had nothing that I needed. Since my kid was older all I could do was explain what we had gone through and suggest books. I decided to stick with my local folks who I could talk to in reality.

This book shows exactly who "they" are... they are the ones who want to blame the vaccines, they are the ones who want to skew science to their own conclusions, they are the ones that want to take advantage of desperate parents, they are the ones who want to divert scarce public funds from educational therapies to some phantom cause/cure... especially for there are kids like mine with OTHER disabilities!

If you are interested in how special interests have taken over an issue and caused more harm than good... get this book!

After thirty years as a pediatrician I have read volumes of literature on the controversies in health care and do so with a cautious optomism. Dr. Offit has authored an enjoyable summary of a complex subject.I read it overnight. I've passed my copy on to another in my group and will order more for my loaner library.

Paul Offit's writings and his behavior have consistently reflected his strong commitment to both children's health and to science. This book underscores the many problems that can occur when emotion-driven rather than science-driven actions impact: treatments, resource allocations, policies, and ultimately health outcomes. "Autism's False Prophets" is well written and I couldn't put it down. Recognizing that Dr. Offit is donating all royalties from the sale of this book to autism research, I just ordered four more copies to give to friends.

Critics of the book have claimed here that epidemiological studies are what the tobacco industry used to back their claims that cigarette smoking was safe, and also have criticized Dr. Offit because his specialty is infectious diseases, not neurology.

First, epidemiological studies are extremely sensitive when properly conducted; if a large enough population is studied, adverse effects down to the level of one event in 100,000 or even smaller can be detected. Several large-scale studies have been conducted and have found no evidence of a link between autism and vaccinations.

Second, though Dr. Offit is not a neurologist, vaccination is one of the things an infectious-disease specialist knows more about than the average M.D. Several reviewers have made much of Dr. Bernadine Healy's recommendation for further study; it should be pointed out that Dr. Healy's specialty was neither neurology nor infectious diseases, but cardiology. Furthermore, she was a member of the advisory board of The Advancement of Sound Science Center, an advocacy group which was funded by Philip Morris, and operates out of the home of Steven Milloy, whose efforts on behalf of the tobacco industry are well-known. Ah, irony.

One of the cornerstones of sound science is reproducibility. Just like cold fusion, the isolated studies purporting to demonstrate a link between vaccines and autism have not proved repeatable by other scientists, yet Wakefield and others are still believed by many despite this. That's not science, it's faith.

Yes, Galileo was a rebel, but not every rebel is a Galileo.

In my opinion, this book is filled with outdated information and tries to scare patients into avoiding dental advances made over the past 25 years. If these guys ever write a similar book about medical treatment, they will probably recommend leeches and bloodletting for your ailments!

At times, this book is hysterical. The authors coin the useful nicknames "Dr. Goodwork," "Dr. Poorwork, "Dr. Fraud," and "Dr. Quack" to describe stereotypical dentists. And I laughed out loud as I read about the toils of Goodwork to save teeth from the evils of mistreatment by Poorwork, and about how managed care forces many Goodworks into the dark abyss of the Poorworks, never to return again.

Unfortunately, laughs are the strongest point of this book. The authors spend way too much time lambasting their favorite target, the American Dental Association, and too little time offering proof for their perception that the nation is awash in Poorworks. Though the cover claims to tell us what we must know to find a good dentist, a great deal of the text is a political manifesto. In fact, only the last chapter offers any advice on how to find a good dentist, and it only gives a few paragraphs!

And this book which claims to tell us how to "keep healthy teeth" spends two paragraphs of its two hundred pages discussing dental floss, and offers absolutely no tips on how to floss correctly?

Buy this book if you want a laugh. Don't buy it if you want something useful.

After attending many so-called seminars which pressure dentists into applying high ticket technologies or overstepping our realm(s) of expertise, this book is our conscious. As a professional with the future in mind, baby boomers will be around for a while--so should the fruits of our labor. This book reminds us all of what really matters the most: GOOD WORK.

After attending many so-called seminars which pressure dentists into applying high ticket technologies or overstepping our realm(s) of expertise, this book is our conscious. As a professional with the future in mind, baby boomers will be around for a while--so should the fruits of our labor. This book reminds us all of what really matters the most: GOOD WORK.

Many dentists have opted for "modern" treatments which also happen to have huge pricetags. Why pay for unscientifically proven methods which may not last as long as the loan repayment? It is not the consumer's fault that dentists are unable to stand up to insurance companies. Get real!!

The above review is silly--it's like saying I bought a computer book from 5 years ago and it's out-of-date. Duh.

Anything by Barrett is a must-read, because he exposes core truths about health quackery and frauds.

I have been using this textbook for four semesters with undergraduates obtaining a minor in health education and am frustrated with the information that is outdated and full of errors. I will no longer be using the text in my courses. The food pyramid is wrong, exercise theories are incorrect, etc. My exercise science majors this past semester were disgusted with the mistakes.

Pat
Assistant Professor Health Education
Massachusetts Private College

I happened to read this article online for free on the website for the Skeptical Inquirer magazine, so I'm kind of surprised to see it here. Also the price is quite substantial for what is actually a small article. Buying a copy of the magazine it was printed in only costs a little bit more and gets you probably 12 times the content.

My main objection, though, is that it talks about Tumblety being brought up as a Ripper suspect through "recent" research. This is quite bizarre as the research is actually a decade old. All of the information here is available in various places on the web for free, and actually with more recent information. For example, some of the facts the author of this article claims about Tumblety have been proven to be completely wrong.

Between being severely outdated extremely expensive for a website article (you can get full fledged books and scholarly journals with the most recent information about the Jack the Ripper case that have 30 times or more the words of this article for not too much more money), I can't recommend it.

This article would be of interest to armchair Ripperologists, as it discusses a somewhat newly rediscovered suspect by the name of Francis J. Tumblety. It really only provides enough information and surmise to wet your investigative whistle, but it is quite even-handed in positing arguments both for and against this "quack doctor" being the Ripper. The main source of the new suspicions is a letter written by former chief inspector John G. Littlechild to a journalist named George R. Sims in 1913, which only came to light after Stewart Evans procured Sims' papers in 1993. My first instinct is, of course, to turn to Philip Sugden, the consummate Ripperologist. Interestingly, in the second edition of Sugden's The Complete History of Jack the Ripper, he refers to the Littlechild letter but names no names because Stewart was still privately investigating the contents (Stewart's findings were later detailed in his book Jack the Ripper: First American Serial Killer). It is strange, however, that more prominent men involved in the investigation (such as Macnaghten) make no mention of Tumblety when Littlechild identifies him as a prominent suspect in 1888. (The fact that Littlechild did not even recognize the name of Montague Druitt makes him a less than reliable witness, if you ask me.)

Tumblety is unquestionably a fascinating character - he was even arrested on suspicion of conspiracy in Abraham Lincoln's assassination (seemingly because he had the misfortune of choosing a very unlucky alias). Much is made of his hatred for women (he supposedly married a prostitute who apparently kept working after the nuptials), and this article refers to the possibility that it was Tumblety whom an agent of Scotland Yard followed to New York City in the wake of what turned out to be the Final Whitechapel murder.

To the article's credit, it discusses reasons put forth by researchers and historians both for and against Tumblety's possible guilt. There's no shortage of fascinating suspects in the Whitechapel murders, and you can definitely add Tumblety's name to the list of sick individuals roaming around London at the time of the Ripper crimes. Whether or not the man was Jack the Ripper, he is the most promising new suspect to come along in recent years, and this article, short and basic as it is, definitely made me want to dive back into my own Ripperologist pursuits.