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The Claims List
    The Skeptic Friends Network invites you to visit our list of some of the more popular claims, disciplines, ideas, myths and fantasies that have been presented as facts but have no supporting evidence, or worse, have been shown to be false.

    We also invite you to contribute to this list. Unfortunately, we think it will be very long before it's done....

Astrology
When the Moon is in the seventh house and Jupiter aligns with Mars, it will have no effect on you at all.
  
UFOlogy
See the Kil Report
  
Homeopathy
A molecule of medicine, taken with sufficient amounts of mineral water, will quench your thirst.
  
Spiritualism
Before she died, one of the Fox sisters, who was the first to conduct seances, admitted that it was all a hoax.
  
Pyramid Power
Seems to work best if you’re dead. Live Egyptians didn’t live in pyramids.
  
Astral Projection
The only way to fly…
  
Therapeutic Touch
See me feel me touch me heal me…
  
Channeling
Like spiritualism except the spirits are strangers from other worlds, times or dimensions and have German accents.
  
Angels
Can be found in the Bible.
  
Cold Fusion
Last guys who claimed to have found a way crashed and burned.
  
Facilitated Communication
Test after test has shown that this is a good way to find out what the facilitator would communcate if the facilitator was the handicapped person being facilitated. Let me start again… Test after test has shown that this method of communicating is subconscious wishful thinking on the part of the facilitator.   Whew!
  
Tarot Cards
Fortune telling done with cards. Usually for money. Always horseshit.
  
Scientific Creationism
  
Telekinesis
The most famous spoon bender around is Uri Geller. He was caught on film bending a spoon against himself behind his back. There is a lot of good Geller stuff over at Randi’s web site.
  
Remote Viewing
The CIA (directed by Congress) actually tested this. The results were that they wasted a lot of your money.
  
The Shroud of Turin
Paint.
  
Satanic Crime
Listening to a Black Sabbath record played forward.
  
Spontaneous Human Combustion
If you’re overweight, don’t fall asleep in a chair while smoking a pipe!
  
Palm Reading
More fortune telling…
  
Big Foot
We need to send missionaries
  
Psychic Detectives
Uri Geller does this, too.
  
Ouija
“You moved it!”
  
Electromagnetic Fields and Cancer
No link has been found.
  
Reincarnation
Ever notice how many people who make this claim were someone famous in their last incarnation?
  
Crop Circles
More UFO stuff. The guys who started doing these first admitted that it was a hoax and yet it won’t go away.
  
Nessie
Why are the pictures always fuzzy?
  
Scientology
According to L. Ron Hubbard, mental disorders aren’t your fault. Blame them on pre-existing souls from outer space! Millions of years ago, Xenu, a psychotic alien, gathered them up and dropped ’em inside volcanoes. Not content, Xenu tossed hydrogen bombs into those same volcanoes, blew them up, and we’re still suffering those traumatic memories. But an auditor will “clear” those memories with your life savings. You think that’s weird? Scientology is tax-exempt! Now, that is weird!
  
Ghosts
 
  
Weeping Statues and Paintings
Leaky roofs and hoaxes.
  
God
All the evidence is anecdotal.
  
Thought Field Therapy
Claims to be “psychotherapy at a quantum level.” Quacks love to insert the word “quantum” into their gibberish. It sounds profound, yet foggy — like philosophy. &ldquot;Thought Field Therapy” is only acupuncture with a new spin — you abolish mental disorders by “stimulating the meridian points used in Oriental cultures.” But if you combine acupuncture with Freudian therapy, won’t you become Pinhead from the movie Hellraiser?
  
The Bermuda Triangle
A good place to get away from it all.
  
Crystal Power
See, they work in radios, so it must be true.
  
Faith Healing
I… I… I can walk!!!
  
Numerology
More frigging fortune telling.
  
Clairvoyance
A must for seances.
  
Levitation
A magician’s trick.
  
Psychic Surgery
You usually have to go to the Philippines to be fleeced by a psychic surgeon. The danger is that if you have something life-threatening you may die because you didn’t go to a real doctor.
  
Demon Possession
Bring a soup spoon.
  
Near Death Experiences (the tunnel and the light)
Oxygen deprivation. After riding a centrifuge people have reported having the same kinds of hallucinations.
  
Mental Telepathy
Mind reading. Many have tested this. No positive evidence has come from careful, controlled testing.
  
Fortune Telling
Why use cards or palms when you can use a crystal ball?
  
Perpeptual Motion Machines
The patent office now requires a working model
  
Psychic Friends
The Psychic Friends Network files for bankruptcy, and the company’s 2,000 salaried psychics never saw it coming!
  
Body Memories
Some, but certainly not all, therapists, chiropractors, and psychologists claim that “body memories” are “memories” stored within the cells of the body. Therefore, if I were to punch you in the arm, you would, besides getting an obnoxious bruise, retain the “memory” of the bruise within the cells in your arm. That not only violates biology and anatomy, but it also tempts me to crack a joke about masturbation. But, I’ll refrain.
  
Magnetic Therapy
“Attracts” those who are gullible, or built like the Marvel Comics hero Ironman.
  
Dowsing
Gotta cut down on the coffee… damn these shaky hands.
  
Medical Intuitive
A “psychic” who diagnoses medical problems from adverse energy fields. This works best with people not suffering from a terminal illness and are in fair health… or are psychosomatics. If you are questioned and must be specific, either name an internal organ as the root of the problem and/or mutter briskly and incoherently, yet always look confident. If you play your cards right, you could appear on the Oprah show! Note: having a credulous parapsychologist in tow to verify your claims always helps as well, to add profundity.
  
The 10% Myth
For those of you who think you have plenty of gray matter to spare, you don’t. I hope this information didn’t come too late for you…
  
Rebirthing or Breath Regression Therapy
Your problems stem from your trauma at birth. Lie down, breath in quickly after every exhale until you feel a tingle of energy in your limbs and a lightness in your body. In other words, until you hyperventilate. Go back and relive your birth. Feel better? $100 please, and you’ll need ten more sessions. (D. Finn)
  
We’re not saying who did it. Nudge nudge, wink wink.
  
If they fit on the fridge, how hard would it be to put them in shoes? And the markup is terrific!
  
Conspiracy theories
Call me paranoid. Call me delusional. But all you have are the facts. I’m not stupid enough to fall for that!
  
Holocaust denial
Why are you always trying to make Hitler look bad?
  
Quantum Healing in the New Age
Don’t tell me [fill in the blank] isn’t science. Not when there is a word like “quantum” in it. Now excuse me while I alter my reality.
  
Feng Shui
If you don’t remodel you will never be happy. Sign here.
  
Family Values
Big brother dressed up like the Religious Right.
  
Free Market
As utopian as communism. And we saw how that worked out.
  
Ouch! That hurts!
  
John Edward
I’m getting an M or a J. Anyone? Or a P or a C, anyone? Am I getting warmer? Did anyone you ever knew breathe before he or she died? Anyone?
  
James Van Praagh
I’m getting an M or a J. Please? Or a P or a C, please? Am I getting warmer? Did anyone you ever knew breathe before he or she died? Please?
  
Naturopathy
Emphasizes the body’s innate ability to heal and maintain itself. But if that doesn’t work, unproven remedies are just swell.
  
No better than any thick skillet at thawing. The only miracle is that they got you to buy one.
  
Dear Sir…
You were specifically chosen to receive this bulk email because we know you’re foolish… I mean honest enough to part with your own money in order to make an easy million or more.
  
Infomercials
But wait, there’s more! We now have your credit card number.
  
Forget evidence-based meds and ingest cyanide instead. It’s much faster.
  
A rubber ducky in your wash will be just as effective at cleaning your clothes.
  
Chiropractic
Could fix or create a pain in the neck. Good luck.
  
Acupuncture
Study after study has confirmed, well, nothing really. You get the point.
  
Love her or hate her… Naaa, just go ahead and hate her.
  

The mission of the Skeptic Friends Network is to promote skepticism, critical thinking, science and logic as the best methods for evaluating all claims of fact, and we invite active participation by our members to create a skeptical community with a wide variety of viewpoints and expertise.


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