White phosphorus is a wax-like chemical substance that ignites spontaneously when exposed to oxygen. It burns at extremely high temperatures and continues to burn as long as it is exposed to air.

Guest post by Ken McLeod Over the years these pages and many others have reported on the risks of using ayahuasca and kambo, psychoactive substances used by shamans, alt-med practitioners, cranks and ...

The Austrian news magazin PROFIL published a review of my new book. Both the book and the review are in German. I took the liberty of translating the latter for my readers who do not read German: It ...

It publishes an incredilby high volume of papers: ~50,000 in 2025. An unusual high percentage of these articles are on so-called alternative medicine (SCAM). Its article retraction rate seems one ...

Quantum seems to be all the rage in the weird and wonderful world of SCAM; we have touched upon this phenomenon several times before: And the award for the most spectacular ‘quantum bollocks’ goes to ...

Yesterday Dana commented on this blog the following: … And while you’re there, I am still waiting for anyone here to review and critique my newest contribution to the PubMed literature: Rockefeller, ...

This study was aimed at determining whether four weeks of Rhodiola rosea (RHO) supplementation improves intermittent exercise performance, post-exercise blood lactate concentrations, and ...

Debates on researching SCAM frequently hinge on the tension between theoretical plausibility and empirical testing. The central question is this: should interventions that contradict well-established ...

This prospective cohort study investigated associations of coffee and tea intake with dementia risk and cognitive function. It included female participants from the Nurses’ Health Study (NHS; n = 86 ...

In recent decades, acupuncture has attracted extensive research spanning an astonishingly wide array of medical conditions, from chronic pain and neurological disorders to infectious diseases and ...