BLUF
Baseless claims and pseudoscience are pervasive in the current health and wellness industry; it sometimes seems we’ve made little progress since the days of snake-oil promoters—-even though the internet now makes it very easy to check up on wellness industry claims.Summary
This article by Nick Tiller, writing for Skeptical Inquirer, makes the following points:
- The wellness industry has survived by exploiting scientific naiveté and our innate desire for simple solutions.
- Humans are hardwired for heuristics (making approximations) that appear to save us time and effort.
- Contemporary culture is characterized by fake news and bad science propagated by some social media platforms.
- The media also exploit the quick-fix fallacy in its biased interpretation of scientific developments.
See: Pseudoscience | New Scientist
References
Recent Runway Posts related to this topic:
- See: Collections | The Runway (airforce.gov.au)
- CRITICAL THINKING 01: COLLECTION | The Runway (airforce.gov.au)
References from the Web:
- SEP 2022 The Wellness Scam: Gyms, Gurus, Goop, and the Cult of Self-Care ‹ Literary Hub (lithub.com)
- OCT 2022 We're all being scammed by self-care. Thanks, internet. | Mashable
