Dr. Sood, Mayo'd, woo'd, not good

The January 3 Baltimore Sun had an article touting ayurvedic woo: "Ayurvedic medicine aims to correct balance of energy."

Because, heaven knows how many times those scientifically unknown and undetected "energies" get imbalanced. Especially the imbalances with clues lurking right there on your tongue. And golly, real-medicine doctors never think to say, "Your heartburn may be caused by an imbalance of energies. Let me look at your tongue."

It's disturbing that Tribune Media Services continues to distribute articles suggesting such ridiculous, non-scientific alternative-to-real-medicine and that The Sun continues to publish them.

It's even more disturbing that the article was written by a doctor from the Mayo Clinic, Dr. Amit Sood. Is no U.S. hospital free of doctors promoting and supporting woo?

At least the article did mention that research supporting ayurvedic medicine woo was "very limited" and that ayurvedic dietary supplements may be contaminated. Nothing like contaminated supplements to cure you when you're ailing because of unbalanced energies.

The article also cautions that "[n]o formal credentialing system exists in the U.S. for ayurvedic medicine practitioners. That means there is no guaranteed that someone who claims to be an ayurvedic doctor actually has credible qualifications or specific training." Yeah, because being treated by someone formally trained and credentialed in woo will give a patient much better results than being treated by someone who is not.

Save $1 on diluted duck innards goo

Noticed this ad for oscillococcinum with a "Save $1" coupon in the December 2 issue of Parade magazine.

Oscillococcinum is a homeopathic non-remedy for the flu. Its "active" ingredient is water anas barbarae hepatis et cordis extractum, AKA duck liver and heart, that have been allowed to ripen for 40 days into a duck innards goo that's then diluted in water many times over so that the end result is one part duck goo in 10²⁰⁰⁰ water molecules. In other words, the final product that is sold is water. And nothing but water. (So it probably, as advertised, has no side effects or drug interactions.)

The chances of water effectively treating flu is (I know some might find this hard to believe) none. Even if the water is packaged in tiny doses priced at about $1.50 - $2.00 per dose or $4.50 - $6.00 per day.

If you're going to pay that much for water that won't treat your flu, you might as well save $1.00 doing it.

Groupon woo: Fancy schmanchy pricey enemas

If you believe that nasty, nameless, scary "toxins" are stuck in your body's exit tunnel, and they need to be...um... pressured into leaving, has Groupon got a deal for you! Fancy schmanchy pricey enemas!

According to the ad, "Certified hydrotherapists assist with internal cleansing sessions by massaging clients' bellies to drive out impacted toxins." Certified hydrotherapists! So you know that this can't be quackery. These are serious professionals who know how to give someone an enema.

"Over 60" of these bargain sessions have been snapped up already, so "the deal is on!" Hurry! You have only three days left to pay to have water squirted up your ass for no good reason.

Doggone it! Baltimore Humane Society promotes animal woo

Doggone it! The Baltimore Humane Society is now promoting woo. Its latest newsletter contained the following announcement:

There's a disclaimer: "The workshops (and Reiki in general) is presented only as a complement to traditional veterinary care to encourage more hands-on bonding time. It is not meant to replace traditional veterinary medicine."

However, the host of the workshops, The Animal Reiki Alliance, promotes reiki for more than encouraging more hands-on bonding time.

According to the Reiki Healing for Our Animal Companions brochure on the ARA website:

Reiki helps animals in many ways:
• Aiding in pain management for animals who
are ill or injured.
• Promoting relaxation and calm for animals with
emotional issues, anxiety, separation anxiety
or stress.
• Increasing the bond between human and
animal - a great way to ease an animal’s
transition to a new home environment or
to enhance training your pet.
• Bringing peace and comfort to a dying pet by
easing the transition into death.
• Facilitating other healing responses, including
reduced tumor sizes.

$125 seems like a lot of money to learn more hands-on bonding, even if the workshop does include an "attunement."

However,  if you want to spend even more on learning hands-on bonding, and you've already been attuned,  there's a Level 2 Workshop

Reiki must be super special since it apparently can promote hands-on bonding from a distance.

Injured hawk treated with bird accupuncture. It doesn't help. Sadly, hawk is euthanized.

A female red hawk, injured in November 2010 on the Johns Hopkins campus when she flew into a library window, was euthanized when attempts at rehabilitation, including "bird acupuncture," failed, according to The Baltimore Sun.

In The Sun article, Kathy Woods, in charge of the bird's rehabilitation, explained the difference between human and bird acupuncture: "Instead of having you sit there for half an hour holding a bird of prey with needles, they take a vitamin, and draw it up into tiny syringes. They inject that, and that amount of fluid is the pressure."

So vitamins injected into a bird with tiny syringes is bird acupuncture? Who decided that? I guess the ancient Chinese who knew so much more than modern science and medicine. Vitamins, syringes. Those ancient Chinese really were advanced. And I'll grant that the vitamin injection procedure does seem like a better method than holding a hawk with needles in her for half an hour. Yep, wise people those ancient Chinese.

Faith healing: two woos in one!

 Ad from The Baltimore Sun, July 8, 2011

Faith healing: combining health woo with religion! It's a double-woo.

But if god planned for you to have concerns and problems, should you be trying to mess with his plan?

Not-a-diagnostician David Geier kicked off Maryland Commission on Autism

According to an article in The Baltimore Sun, the proponent of a dangerous and untested treatment for children with autism, David Geier, who was on the Maryland Commission on Autism as a "diagnostician," even though he has no education or training that would qualify him to diagnose anyone with anything, was removed from the Commission by Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley.

David Geier was recently charged with practicing medicine without a license.

O'Malley's action came after Geier refused to resign despite a statement from Geier though his attorney that he only worked as an "administrator" in the clinics headed by his father, Dr. Mark Geier, whose license to practice medicine was recently suspended by the Maryland Board of Physicians. Neither David Geier nor his attorney explained how an "administrator" was qualified to serve in the capacity of "diagnostician" on the Commission.

The question remains: how did David Geier ever get to be appointed to the Commission as a "diagnostician" in the first place? And why was there was no public outcry from qualified Commission members about his appointment?

Maryland State Board of Physicians finally acts against autism non-expert Geier

The Maryland Board of Physicians has finally taken action against Dr. Mark Geier, the Maryland physician who marketed himself as an "autism expert," even though he had no credentials that would qualify him as such, and who treated children with unstudied and potentially dangerous therapies. The Board's order suspended Geier's license to practice medicine in Maryland.

According to an article in today's Baltimore Sun, Geier's lawyer, Joseph A. Schwartz III, is quoted as saying: "If you read the [order], you say, 'Holy God, this is awful.' But if it were so awful, they should have an injured child, and they don't."

Really? That's the legal standard? Doctors can treat children with untested and potentially dangerous therapies based on junk science, misdiagnose them, experiment upon them, and fail to secure the informed consent from the children's parents, but you can't take emergency action against that doctor until you actually have "an injured child"?

While Schwarz claims Geier is not "an immediate threat to patients," in my opinion, he's been a threat to patients since the day he started treating children with autism with treatment protocols that included Lupon and chelation. Given that Geier began his controversial treatments more than five years ago, and his alleged autism treatments were hardly a secret (also see here), why did it take the Board of Physicians so long to stop Geier?

Since Geier's son, David, who is not a doctor, and claims no medical training, allegedly examined and diagnosed at least one patient according to the Board of Physicians' order against Mark Geier, can we also hope to finally see some action taken against him in the near future?

Another voice speaking out against pseudomedicine classes at the University of Maryland School of Medicine

Finally, another voice complaining publicly about the University of Maryland School of Medicine teaching quackery pseudo-medicine through its Center for Integrative Medicine!

In Why Medical Schools Should Not Teach Integrative Medicine, Steven Salzberg, a faculty member at the University of Maryland College Park, writes:

"Academic freedom allows professors to proclaim all sorts of wild ideas, including nonsensical ones, but we don’t have to allow them to teach courses with no basis in reality." You'd think that would be a pretty basic standard for any valid educational institution, especially a high-regarded medical school, but apparently not.

Salzberg points out, frankly, that the CIM's "clinical services" such as qigong, reiki, and reflexology are scientific and medical "nonsense." And he asks about CIM's use of homeopathy through its clinical services, "Why isn’t this malpractice? I haven’t figured that out yet." Why indeed?

Why aren't members of the faculty at the Medical School who believe in science and science-based medicine protesting, often and loudly, the teaching of pseudoscience and alternative-to-real-medicine to future doctors at their school? Why is the school allowed to offer classes that make our future doctors dumber, and put their future patients at risk?

And why aren't doctors who work within the University of Maryland Medical System protesting the CIM's providing clinical services that offer pseudo-medicine as valid equivalents of science-based medicine, thereby confusing, misleading, and eventually harming the public? Isn't there an ethical problem in offering pseudo-medicine to patients as if it were real medicine?

The only class in CIM the medical school should be teaching is "Why Complementary and Integrative Medicine is Utter Nonsense."

Career woo at Community College of Baltimore County

I've written before about the woo courses being offered as continuing education at both the Community College of Baltimore County and Howard Community College. And...here we go again.

But this time, the woo is worse, because it's not being offered as a course in Wellness or Personal Enrichment so people can be stupid in their personal lives. The latest CCBC continuing ed catalog lists woo in Career Training which may allow people to be stupid in their careers and negatively impact a larger group of people:

The First is listed under "Complementary Medicine":

Reiki for Health Care Professionals-Level 1

Learn the history of the development of Reiki and how Qi (energy) is present in everything around us. You will also learn about how Qi flows through the human body and how Reiki influences this flow and affects disease/wellness. By the end of the session, you will be able to apply your learning to a self-healing.

Oh, joy. "Level 1" woo, so there's apparently higher level woo training for health care professionals. I guess I may need to start asking my health care professionals if they practice science-based medicine or not.

Also being offered under "Professional CEUs":

Qigong for the Massage Therapist

Learn about body opening movements to relax the body and clear an accumulation of tension and how to apply these techniques to a current clinical practice. Topics include the Eight Pieces of Brocade to cleanse the body and circulate energy to improve the health and the body/mind, stimulate healing and increase longevity. This course is pending approval by the National Certification Board for Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork (NCBTMB). 

So, pending professional CEU's for a course in woo in order to remain certified by a certification board that certifies massage therapists in "all modalities and disciplines" including woo like shiatsu and reflexology.

Certified woo practitioners. With certifications accepted by Maryland and 37 other states and DC accoring to the NCBTMB web site. Aarrgghhh!

Woo for military veterans

Picked up from a table with resource information for military veterans:

If we're offering support to veterans, shouldn't it be something supported by evidence to show that it works?

PZ takes on woo at University of Maryland School of Medicine

PZ Myers blogged yesterday about a subject that has caused me, if not quite despair, then severe despondency: the medical and health woo being embraced by the University of Maryland School of Medicine and given a veneer of pseudo-plausibility by its Center for Integrative Medicine.

When I go to a doctor, I expect one who is trained in science-based medicine, not the art of woo.

Facebook Follies: Homeopathy? Aw, no, cuz!

Most of the irrationality that appears in my Facebook newsfeed is religious in nature. No surprise there. Most of my friends and relatives both in real life and on Facebook identify as religious. But every once in a while, some medical woo passes by too.

My favorite cousin now "likes" San Diego Homeopathy. At first I was rather surprised. "Aw, no, cuz!" He's a smart, educated, well-traveled man, so why would he believe such a silly thing as homeopathy?

But after I'd thought about the "why" a while, I realized my cousin exemplifies a certain type of woo believer: the free-spirited, nature embracing, non-conformist New Ager.

Rather than just yell, "What are you thinking?!" at my cousin, I decided to find out how much he really understood about homeopathy. And the answer was, "Not much." Literally. That was his answer.

I asked, "Do you know how homeopathic remedies are made? What they contain?"

"No, not really," he answered." 

Drat!" I said. "I was hoping you could explain to me how homeopathy works when it seems to defy our current knowledge of biology, chemistry, and physics."

In reply, all I could hear were the crickets: "Chirp, chirp, chirp."

I then asked my cousin why he "liked" this particular homeopathic center when he knew little about homeopathic theory. He said, "I have a friend who is a homeopathic doctor, and she seems pretty healthy. Plus, homeopathic treatment costs a whole lot less than going to a regular doctor." 

By "regular doctor," he meant "a doctor who practices medicine, rather than some alternative-to-medicine.

I've never done any research on what homeopathic treatments from a homeopathic doctor cost, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that they're less expensive than science-based medical treatments are. After all, homeopathic remedies are basically water. And seccussion--the shaking that makes each successive dilution of the homeopathic remedies increasingly powerful--probably doesn't cost as much as the technology used by science-based medical doctors does.

But really, if you consider the cost vs. benefit, with homeopathy, gullible patience are paying for water, not medication or treatments that have been shown to be generally safe and effective.

Personally, I'd rather pay more for something that might actually work, than a lesser amount for something that couldn't possibly do any good for what ailed me.

Plus, if I wanted to treat my illness with water, water from my tap is a lot cheaper than even the homeopathic remedies used by my cousin. And it works just as well. 

Homeopathic products ad in Newsweek

I'd put Newsweek's May 24 &31 double issue aside the day it arrived, since I was really busy then, and totally forgot about it until this weekend.

So, I'm finally browsing through it, and although I'm usually fairly oblivious to ads (I, and others like me, must be the bane of advertisers), I happened to glance at the ads under "Best of Healthy Living"--because, really, who doesn't want to live healthily?--and saw the above ad for two homeopathic products.

OK. I know the ad is legal, even though I highly doubt that either of these remedies can provide evidence that they are either safe or effective for treating fibromyalgia or tinnitus, as science-based OTC products that make medical claims are required to do. And that's just dangerous. And pathetic. And misleading. And a rip-off of gullible consumers.

But, geez, Newsweek, even though I realize that you are hard-up for advertisers these days, don't you have any standards for the ads you accept?

And when is Congress and the FDA going to finally take some action to protect consumers against misleading and potentially dangerous ads for untested products like these?

Woo medicine in The Baltimore Sun--again

Oh, Baltimore Sun! While I frequently lament your continuing wasting away into a emaciated and frail version of your former self, there are times when I feel almost a sense of relief that almost no one reads you these days. Thursday, June 10, 2010, was one of those days.

I turned to your "Health & Style" section, and there, on page 3, I found yet another article presenting woo medicine as fact: "How and when to seek alternative therapies," part of your "Ask the expert" series, taken from an edited transcript of a June 8 chat with Dr. Joyce Frye on the Picture of Health blog.

Dr. Frye, "an osteopathic physician board-certified in obstetrics and gynecology and in integrative and holistic medicine with the Center for Integrative Medicine and the University of Maryland School of Medicine," is the same woo-promoting doctor I previously blogged about in March in my post "Allergy woo." Homeopathy has not emerged from the pathetic pit of pseudo-medicine since March. No surprise really, since it's failed to provide any evidence of efficacy in the more than 200 years it's been competing with science-based medicine, and as admitted by The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Medicine, "a number of its key concepts are not consistent with the current understanding of science, particularly chemistry and physics." 

Furthermore, well-designed scientific studies have shown that acupuncture, which Dr. Frye also recommended in the article, works no better than a placebo or sham acupuncture.

Still, no wonder, as noted by the article, "alternative remedies are becoming more common." Not only are there plenty of websites promoting woo to the gullible and desperate, but also, as demonstrated by this article, claims for woo medicine are being credulously reported as fact by mainstream media like The Sun, increasingly taught at medical and nursing schools, and offered in hospitals.

(As to why and how academic medicine has increasingly supported alternative-to-real-medicine, and related issues--like medical ethics and academic-medicine-woo's pernicious effect upon the health of patients--I refer you to Orac's blog, Respectful Insolence, on which he has written extensively, and with increasing despair, about the subject.)

I did find this part of the article amusing, in the same way I find The Great Oz amusing when he insists, "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain": 

Q: Are there watchdogs for alternative medicine practitioners?   

A: Unfortunately, the "watchdogs" are usually skeptics who want to hold all alternative practitioners out as "quacks," so they aren't very helpful...." 

Yes, indeed, don't listen to those silly critical thinking watchdogs who ask for evidence that alternative-to-real-medicine works as claimed.  

OK, Sun, I understand that you relied on an expert who is on the faculty at the generally well-regarded University of Maryland School of Medicine. But would you publish, without question or criticism, an article in which an expert in finance who taught at a respected business school, recommended alchemy as an effective method of attaining financial independence? 

Sigh. Maybe, given your credulous reporting of woo medicine, you would.

Allergy woo

I've seen woo regularly covered by The Baltimore Sun and local TV stations, not skeptically, asking, "What's the evidence this works as alleged?" or "Do the claims made about [insert name of woo] even make sense when considered rationally and based on what we know about biology, chemistry, and physics?" Rather the local media tends to credulously report on, or even supports the use of, woo without any critical analysis. 

An article in today's Sun, "Nothing to sneeze at", (titled "Easing your allergies" in the on-line version of the article) is but the most recent example.

In the article, Jill Rosen, writes: 

Doctors say more allergy sufferers are looking for relief beyond traditional medicines and taking fresh looks at natural remedies such as the Neti pot, vitamins and herbs. 

And physicians say these things work--particularly for people with mild or moderate symptoms. 

I have no problems with the use of a Neti pot, even if, as the article indicates, it's been endorsed by Oprah Winfrey, a frequent promoter of woo and magical thinking. Saline nose spray? I have no problem with that either, or with the suggestion that allergy sufferers use humidifiers and hot showers to "moisturize dry raw noses."

But then the woo-recommending starts:

The writer interviewed Dr. Joyce Frye, who is described as "an assistant professor of family and community medicine with the University of Maryland School of Medicine's Center for Integrative Medicine", a inter-departmental center that promotes the use of woo, and is a center whose existence at the medical school, which I would expect to be promoting and using science-based medicine--not alternatives to it--should be embarrassed.

The article continues: 

While using these techniques to wash out nasal passages and refresh the nose, doctors also are pointing patients to herbal medications that can help with congestion, watery eyes and sneezing.

While drugs like Zyrtec and Claritin suppress symptoms, herbs work in the opposite way, Frye says.

"The homeopathic concept is that symptoms are the body's best response to restoring itself to health," Frye says. "Rather than suppressing symptoms, we should use small doses of herbs to help stimulate the body's self-corrective impulses to get healthy again."
... 

The thing people need to understand with the herbal remedies, Frye says, is that they work slowly and become more effective over time. Though people in Asia have understood this for thousands of years, the lack of immediate results can frustrate Westerners who expect on-the-spot relief.

"The herbal medicines are so highly diluted that people stuck in the old world of chemistry think there can't be anything in them, and that it's all placebo effect," Frye says. "That's not true."

"People stuck in the old world of chemistry"? I guess Frye is referring to those who are out-of-touch with the new world of pseudoscience and woo. You know, people like chemists, biologists, or doctors who believe in medicine which is based on evidence of efficacy. Yeah, evidence-based science is just so old-fashioned and out-of-date.

There happens to be a damn good reason to reject homeopathy as a treatment for allergies or anything else. It's utter nonsense, quackery.

Although the article and Dr. Frye muddle the distinction, perhaps deliberately, there's a difference between herbal remedies which contain active ingredients, such as the Ginkgo Biloba, Echinachea, and St. John's Wort found on many store shelves and homeopathy.

While the safety and effectiveness of herbal remedies are debatable, the same isn't true of homeopathy. Homeopathy is without a doubt safe (except perhaps if you forgo actual effective treatment and remain sick or get even sicker), but is ineffective as a treatment for anything. And the reason I can say that without qualification is homeopathic remedies are--water.

The National Center for Complimentary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) explains one of the basic principles of homeopathy this way:

The principle of dilutions (or "law of minimum dose") states that the lower the dose of the medication, the greater its effectiveness. In homeopathy, substances are diluted in a stepwise fashion and shaken vigorously between each dilution. This process, referred to as "potentization," is believed to transmit some form of information or energy from the original substance to the final diluted remedy. Most homeopathic remedies are so dilute that no molecules of the healing substance remain; however, in homeopathy, it is believed that the substance has left its imprint or "essence," which stimulates the body to heal itself (this theory is called the "memory of water"). 

Let me repeat from above for emphasis: "Most homeopathic remedies are so dilute that no molecules of the healing substance remain." Given that undeniable fact, there's no plausible way it could work.

You might wonder, as I have, why homeopathic water only has memory of the diluted substance, and not say, the fish poop, pollutants, or other substances with which the water may have been in contact at some point.

Wonder no more. My understanding is that when the homeopaths prepare their remedies, they psychically impart their "intentions" into the water, so that the water knows what substance it is supposed to remember. Really. And it's this absurd system of non-medicine that both The Sun and the medical school are supporting.

Homeopathy is nonsense without a doubt. As NCCAM admits about homeopathy: "There are challenges in studying homeopathy and controversies regarding the field, largely because a number of its key concepts are not consistent with the current understanding of science, particularly chemistry and physics." 

Why then, you ask, would the University of Maryland School of Medicine be teaching and promoting medical rubbish like homeopathy? Good question, and one I'd be interested in hearing the school answer. No matter what rationale the school may offer, I suspect the answer boils down to money and giving patients what they want, not what they can actually benefit from. And for this they ought to be ashamed.

And as for The Baltimore Sun, what's next, I ask? Will you perhaps be promoting the use of astrology to make investment decisions on your financial page? Or promoting divination as a method of making important decisions like which candidate to vote for, or as a tool for police to use to solve crimes?

Facebook Follies: Medical Herbalism Program

Today's Facebook Folly, isn't a post, but an ad that popped up on my profile. I guess because the ads are so carefully targeted to the Facebook user's profile:

Medical Herbalism Program

tai.edu

Expand your medical practice w/foundational knowledge of herbal medicine. Be at the forefront of the wellness revolution! Enroll today.

Maybe Facebook decided to send this to me because they knew this is something I'd be interested in blogging about. If so, Facebook, send me more blog material. (Not that a day doesn't go by when something I might blog about fails to come my way, but I do get bored with blogging so much about my friends posting about Jesus and prayer.)

More community college woo

The Community College of Baltimore County's Continuing Education program offers a wide range of excellent,  beneficial classes to its adult and child students such as GED prep, vocational training,  technology skills, and recreational activities.

So, what the hell, CCBC, with also offering a goodly number of classes teaching people woo, quackery, and pseudoscience?!

Not classes teaching about these subjects. Not classes warning people of the dangers of medical quackery and health scams. Not critical thinking classes teaching healthy skepticism about the paranormal and non-science based healing techniques. Not classes debunking beliefs in the paranormal, supernatural, and pseudoscience. Those types of classes would be perfectly fine, valuable to CCBC students and the community. Teaching those types of classes would be laudable.

No, what CCBC is offering are classes that present pseudoscience, health and wellness quackery, and frauds and hoaxes involving the supernatural and paranormal as true and factual, subjects worthy of being taught by a respected community college.

In addition to some of the same classes I wrote about in yesterday's post: Kundalini Reiki I; Dreams--Self Healing through Dream Analysis; and Understanding Traditional Chinese Medicine, CCBC is offering the following Continuing Education courses for its spring session:

Ghost Studies: Identify the different types of ghosts, spirits, and entities among us. If you've ever felt that you are not alone, learn how to find and investigate suspected haunted areas and sightings. You will apply what you learn and undertake a special investigation.

Advanced Studies in Reflexology: Gain additional tools and skills to use as a reflexologist. Practice ear  reflexology and energy balancing techniques. Unlock personality and health cues with foot analysis. Utilize referral and helper areas. Learn to synthesize technique to create a cohesive treatment plan.

Egyptian Reflexology: [Me: Ooooh, Egyptian reflexology. The exotic Egyptians built those magical, mystical, power-emitting/absorbing pyramids. So this must be more potent and effective than the other type of reflexology. Unless there's a class in, perhaps, ancient Indian reflexology.] Discover how to unlock your body's own natural ability to heal itself through Egyptian reflexology. Learn through touch and pressure techniques how to alleviate mental and emotional stress and tension painlessly. Experience the benefits of improved breathing, balance, and relaxation.

Awaken Your Purpose through Numerology: Discover the world of modern numerology, spiritual awareness, and universal and personal life energy patterns. Understand life's lessons and your inner desires and learn how to fulfill them physically, mentally, emotionally and intuitively.

Healing with Gemstones and Crystals: Discover the benefits of gemstones and crystals for first aid, emotional healing, mediation, space clearing and psychic protection. Learn ways to program, cleanse, charge and intuitively select personal healing stones. Topics include a hands-on introduction to over 20 different gemstones and crystals and their function based on mineral composition and structure.

CCBC, are you so hard up for cash that you are willing to sell your educational integrity to teach these scams, frauds, and hoaxes?

Is no one at CCBC embarrassed that their school is offering instruction in pseudoscience and the paranormal?  Is no one at CCBC concerned that courses are being offered that aren't based in reality and on rationality?

These are not beneficial classes; they are of no value. They are scams, flim-flams, preying on the gullible. By taking the money of students who take these courses, CCBC is complicit in an educational scam. Instead of teaching students to be rational thinkers, instead of offering its students reality-based information, instead of offering courses that benefit its students and the community, CCBC is harming its students and the community by teaching misinformation, magical thinking, and educational garbage. This is a scandal that needs to be stopped. Now!