When most people hear the term ‘Alternative Medicine’ they tend to think that it is used to describe something that offers a tested, tried alternative to mainstream systems of medicine. In India we have three types of systems of treatment and diagnosis- the recognized evidence based one - the scientific system, the recognized but not evidence based ones under the acronym AYUSH- Ayurveda, Unani, Siddha and Homeopathy, and the third has a list that is almost never complete but contains common ones like electrohomeopathy, reiki, pranic healing, aromatherapy, music therapy, gem therapy, etc. The term ‘alternative medicine’ perhaps describes best the last class. (Note: Technically all those systems of treatment and diagnosis that are not science-based are designated as ‘Alternative Medicine’, but in the Indian context there are three categories because of the government’s endorsement of AYUSH.) The third class labeled ‘Alternative Medicine’ in India seems to be the favourite hunting ground for quacks of all types. Read the full story

My first contact with astrology must have been soon after my birth, because a horoscope is a must-have for every child born in my parents’ community. This horoscope must have also been drawn up by my maternal uncle, himself an astrologer of no mean repute, though in the last decades of his life he used to tell me, “it is not for unbelievers like you!”. My first conscious contact with this ’science’ occurred when I was a schoolboy. A cousin of mine, S.S. Kamath, was interested in investigating astrological claims. He told me of an incident where he had copied Jawaharlal Nehru’s (the then Prime Minister of India) horoscope from a magazine and showed it to an astrologer telling him that it was the horoscope of a salesman in a cloth shop. The astrologer made his calculations and told him that it was that of an ordinary man who would be leading a routine humdrum existence. On being told that the horoscope was actually that of the Prime minister of India, the astrologer wiggled out of the situation making up some excuse. Read the full story

Last week we wrote about a report by the media outlet Tehelka which, in collaboration with Cogent EMR, conducted Electromagnetic Radiation surveys of Delhi and concluded that radiation levels are well above recommended levels. Analysis by Vaibhav on the forums demonstrated the flaws in the science on which the Tehelka report rested. As Vaibhav pointed out, EMR from cell phones is too weak to cause any structural damage to DNA. However, there could be other long-term effects of low intensity EMR exposure. In this second part I look at a few of the other many inconsistencies in reporter Rishi’s article and comments in the discussion with us on facebook. Read the full story

This is the first part in a series of articles to check the facts and the analyze evidence concerning the recent Tehelka report concluding that radiation levels in Delhi are far above recommended safe levels.

On June 8, 2010, Tehelka reported on a survey they had done of the city of Delhi. The media outlet teamed up with Cogent EMR, a company that, as fellow Nirmukta member Sajith Unni has pointed out, manufactures a number of products that are extremely dubious. Tehelka’s report ended up being one of the most fear-instilling pieces of journalism on the subject. The reporter, Rishi Mazumdar, essentially concluded that Delhi is a radiation hot-zone with levels far exceeding the acceptable limits suggested by the scientists.

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This is about those brave ’souls’ who were very keen to teach us a lesson and then learnt the lesson that they had much more to learn than to teach, and hence chose the easy way out - run away! There are quite a number of people who have taken that path, however I am going to write only about those few that I can recall off hand. There is a lot of publicity being accorded to the one who was threatened by a Tantrik in 2008 on a TV channel. Two years later, it is still being talked about. It brings to my mind an incident that happened about a decade ago in a place called Charvathur, 75 kms south of Mangalore. Read the full story

Long before the arrogant West coined the term “pseudoscience”, the ancient Indians already knew about it. It is an art that is inherent in the self and manifests through inner pro-activeness, yogic leverage and spiritual actualization. Unfortunately, the modern mind which has been corrupted by western thought, cannot comprehend the sublime supremeness of the ancient art. So I, who is dubbed “Sri Sri….∞ ” Anantananda Swami, will explain the divine art in modern terms, using the science of Gayatri Mantra as an example.

The Gayatri Mantra is a primal force in the Universe. The scientific nature of it has been explained by an ecstatic soul sometime back in the incoherent past. Allow me to demonstrate how the art of pseudoscience was put to use in the creation of that exalted piece of literature. Read the full story

With the many recent claims of people living without food and water, it has become very necessary to examine the issues that have been raised, particularly the methods used to verify the claims of these people. There is this man from Kerala who claims to have extracted energy from the sun by staring at it and converting it to the energy needed to keep his bodily processes going on. There is this man from Gujarat claiming to have been blessed by a goddess who pours something down his throat, and so he does not need any food or water. He also claims to have lived for seven decades without these! Read the full story

The treatment know as Cytotron therapy has no scientific basis and is not noted in any approved text book on cancer therapy or prescribed by any oncologists. But for the past few months this “therapy” has been advertised as a cure for cancer. In its latest avatar, the ad carried the name of a doctor. After we had threatened to complain to the State Medical Council and get his name struck from the medical register for advertising unproved remedies, it disappeared.

But the ads continue to run today. Since the matter is an offense under the Drugs and Magic remedies (Objectionable Advertisements Act), we have brought this to the attention of the assistant drugs controller for Dakshina Kannada for necessary action under the act.

It is criminal to raise false hope in patients by promising cures for which there is no evidence. The entire ad is misleading. We could as well make up one as follows:

Ms. Meena Kumari (name changed), 53 years old, complained of dysentery and was diagnosed with cancer etc. etc. She went in for a quack treatment at ABCD clinic for XYZ therapy and passed away within 3 months. Which goes to prove that XYZ therapy is fake and can be fatal within a short time. It is not known whether the cancer was the cause of her mortality or the quack therapy that promised a very rapid cure.

I request oncologists and physicians to take up this issue with their respective bodies and announce to the public the facts about whether this therapy is approved for public use. In general treatments for diseases are not advertised in India, except by quacks, which should make us suspicious of the antecedents of the treatment and the administrators of the same.

First a quick recap of the events: We had reported on one Mr. Bhaskar Shetty who hit the headlines of DNA’s Bangalore edition on the 23^rd of December, 2009. He had promised to teach me a lesson by demonstrating how scientific asstrology is! He had claimed that he could tell the gender and dead/alive status of 10 individuals within 80% accuracy, using just the date, place and time of birth of the individuals. However, he wanted the conditions to be fool-proof. He was also not interested in the money offered- one million rupees, but only wanted to prove how scientific his method was. I had agreed to an even more fool-proof method of giving him the date, time and place of birth of people who were very much alive and also in the age group 20-30. I just wanted him to tell us if the subjects were male/female, employed/unemployed, married/unmarried and what their educational qualifications were. All of these could have been easily verified from the subjects after the predictions were made, since their mobile numbers would have been placed in sealed and numbered envelopes. The reply from Bhaskar Shetty was that he was willing, but he was insistent that the challenge had to take place in Bangalore. Since, he did not want the prize money, I had waived off the security deposit and had fixed the date at Bangaluru on the 14^th of January,2010. After this Shetty got out of the challenge under the pretext that his son’s marriage was to take place in the first week of February. So, I had extended the date by 2 months and had fixed the challenge date for  the 14^th of March, and had announced the venue and time. Read the full story

This article originally appeared in the March 2010 edition of Himal Magazine.

The defeat of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in India’s general elections last year was greeted with relief by secularists and democrats everywhere. Not entirely unreasonably: they read the fact that the BJP lost a solid 3.4 percent of its previous poll share as evidence that Indian voters had rejected the majoritarian politics of Hindu pride and prejudice, peddled by the BJP and the rest of the Sangh Parivar. The general consensus is that the ideology of Hindu nationalism, or Hindutva, has lost its appeal among the urban youth and middle classes - that secularism has won and “God has left politics,” to borrow the elegant title of a recent essay by Delhi journalist Hartosh Singh Bal. Market reforms and globalisation emerge as the stars of this saga. Both the friends and critics of the BJP agree that it is the fervour for making money in India’s roaring economy that doused the flames of Hindu nationalism from the hearts of the middle classes. But that is not all. The ‘free’ market, we are told by a section of influential Dalit intellectuals, will not only free India from the menace of communal violence, but will also lift the curse of caste oppression. It is fair to say that the gospel of globalisation is gaining ground in India. Read the full story