Deepak Chopra
oracknows | July 3, 2017One of the most persistent narratives latched on to by advocates of "integrative medicine" is that the "mind" can somehow "heal" the body. Sometimes, the claim is that such interventions work through "powerful placebo" effects. Sometimes it involves the abuse of emerging science, such overblown claims about what can be accomplished through epigenetic modifications of DNA and gene expression. While my wife and I were away on vacation last month, there was another example of this claim popping up in the media under headlines like these:
Mindfulness and meditation dampen down inflammation genes…
oracknows | January 3, 2017Back in the day, quacks and cranks liked Wikipedia. Because anyone can become an editor on Wikipedia, they assumed that they could just sign up to edit Wikipedia pages and change them to reflect their views on alternative medicine or whatever other pseudoscientific topic they believed in. When Wikipedia first emerged on the scene, I had to admit that I didn't think very much of it for the very simple reason that anyone could edit, and I did from time to time come across entries that were clearly too woo-friendly. Not surprisingly, I was also concerned that there would be an asymmetry of…
oracknows | November 23, 2016Back in the day, Deepak Chopra used to be a frequent topic of this blog. He still pops up from time to time, such as when irony meters everywhere immediately self-destructed after Chopra criticized Donald Trump for being insufficiently evidence-based or when, after I wrote a post asking why medical conferences keep inviting Chopra to speak, Chopra was so displeased that he actually posted a video attacking me (and other skeptics who’ve criticized his pseudoscience). Unfortunately, Chopra truly is one of the most influential people in “integrative medicine” today. To be honest, I’ve never…
oracknows | November 6, 2016Orac is currently hiding from the Federation in an undisclosed location (somewhere warm and out of the country, the better to avoid election news after having cast an absentee ballot), where he is charging his Tarial cells, the better to return fully recharged and ready to dive back into the massive piles of woo awaiting him when he returns. Since it’s only a brief respite, I had been planning on either reposting material from Orac’s other known hideout on the web, the better not to let this blog lie fallow and lack for Insolence, Respectful and not-so-Respectful, as indicated depending upon…
oracknows | November 3, 2016Way, way back in the day, before I took an interest in pseudoscientific medical claims, I knew who Deepak Chopra was. Back then, though, like most doctors, I didn’t pay much attention to him and didn’t know much about him other than that he was some sort of alternative medicine guru, a physician who had embraced Ayurvedic medicine and blathered about “quantum” consciousness. It didn’t take long once I embraced skepticism to run face-first into the utter woo that s Deepak Chopra’s message, in part thanks to other skeptical bloggers introducing me to his woo. Indeed, back in the early days of…
oracknows | September 27, 2016I’m sure that most of you watched the Presidential debate on Monday night, just as I did. Over the years, these debates have always always painful for me to watch, given the candidates’ tendency to answer the question they want to answer rather than the question actually answered; to find ways to spew prepackaged talking points into answers, whether they’re related to the question or not; and, above all, to see how much spin they can get away with. Particularly annoying is when they pander to their base with particularly brain dead bon mots. Candidates from both parties do it, of course, but…
oracknows | December 1, 2015Of all the slick woo peddlers out there, one of the most famous (and most annoying) is Deepak Chopra. Indeed, he first attracted a bit of not-so-Respectful Insolence a mere 10 months after this blog started, when Chopra produced the first of many rants against nasty "skeptics" like me that I've deconstructed over the years. Eventually, the nonsensical nature of his pseudo-profound blatherings inspired me to coin a term to describe it: Choprawoo. Unfortunately, far too many people find Deepak Chopra's combination of mystical sounding pseudo-profundity, his invocation of "cosmic consciousness"…
oracknows | May 28, 2015I've been at this skeptical blogging thing for over a decade now. I realize that I periodically remind you, my readers, of this and that perhaps I do it too often, but my reminders generally serve a purpose. Specifically, they serve to put an exclamation point on my surprise when I discover a new purveyor of pseudoscience and/or quackery that I had never heard of before but who is apparently fairly well known in the quackosphere. Such is what happened this week, when I learned of a man who appears to be challenging Deepak Chopra and Bruce Lipton for the title of most annoying mystical quack…
oracknows | December 24, 2014
As Orac takes a couple of days to commune with family (as amazing as it is, yes, a Plexiglass box of blinking colored lights has a family) and celebrate the season, here's a lost Christmas gem from Deepak Chopra, who interprets Charles Dickens' classic A Christmas Carol. Unfortunately, embedding is disabled; so you'll have to click on this link. You will, however, appreciate the quantum woo man's message of Christmas cheer.
Merry Christmas!
oracknows | September 16, 2014
Of all the quacks and cranks and purveyors of woo whom I’ve encountered over the years, Deepak Chopra is, without a doubt, one of the most arrogantly obstinate, if not the most arrogantly obstinate. Sure, a quack like Mike Adams wins on sheer obnoxiousness and for the sheer breadth of crankery to which he ascribes, which includes everything from quackery, to New World Order conspiracy theories, to Scientology-like anti-psychiatry rants, to survivalist and gun nut tendencies, but he's so obviously unhinged, as well as intermittently entertaining, that he doesn't quite get under the skin the…
oracknows | June 15, 2014Deepak Chopra isn't very happy right now. In fact, he appears downright pissed off right now, particularly at skeptics, so much so that he's issued a hilariously fatuous "challenge" to James Randi (a.k.a.) The Amazing Randi on You Tube entitled Deepak Chopra's One Million Dollar Challenge to Skeptics:
Yes, apparently with The Amazing Meeting (a.k.a. TAM) less than four weeks away, Chopra is looking to stir the pot a little bit with his usual blend of Choprawoo about consciousness and mind-body dualism and how nasty skeptics can't accept the paranormal and the healing powre of "intent." It's…
oracknows | November 12, 2013Last week, everyone's favorite woo-meister, the man whose woo is so strong that I even coined a term for it way back in the early mists of time (at least as far as this blog is concerned), was woo-fully whining about all those allegedly nasty skeptics on Wikipedia. Yes, Deepak Chopra was clutching his pearls and getting all huffy because, according to him, a group of skeptics known as the Guerilla Skeptics was actually applying science and reason to the Wikipedia entry for his good buddy Rupert Sheldrake. The only problem was, he totally missed the target in that the Guerilla Skeptics…
oracknows | November 4, 2013It occurs to me that things have been perhaps overly serious here at the ol' blog for the last couple of weeks. Don't get me wrong. I think I done good lately, if I do say so myself. However, the constant drumbeat of quackery and depressing stories takes its toll after a while. I need a break.
And our old buddy, Deepak Chopra, was kind enough to give it to me.
So what is it this time? Chopra's been a frequent topic of this blog for a long time, albeit nos so much lately. Indeed, longtime readers know that I was the one who coined a term—Choprawoo—for the pseudoprofound metaphysical mystical…
esiegel | January 25, 2013“I asked the Zebra,
are you black with white stripes?
Or white with black stripes?
And the zebra asked me,
Are you good with bad habits?
Or are you bad with good habits?
Are you noisy with quiet times?
Or are you quiet with noisy times?
Are you happy with some sad days?
Or are you sad with some happy days?
Are you neat with some sloppy ways?
Or are you sloppy with some neat ways?
And on and on and on and on and on and on he went.
I’ll never ask a zebra about stripes...again.” -Shel Silverstein
When it comes to the classical world -- the world on a macroscopic scale -- we all feel comfortable…
oracknows | August 19, 2012If there's one thing that goes back to the very beginning of this blog (or at least it started in the first year), it's having a bit of fun with Deepak Chopra. I realize that to some it might seem like shooting the proverbial fish in a barrel. With a rocket launcher. On the other hand, I like to look at it this way. Deepak Chopra has a multimillion dollar alternative medicine and "quantum consciousness" empire milking the credulous to buy attend his lectures, buy his DVDs and books, and even to buy his video games. He's on television all the time, including appearances on Dr. Oz's show and on…
oracknows | August 17, 2012A couple of days ago, I did one of my usual bits of pontification about alternative medicine, this time around pointing out how religion facilitates the magical thinking that undergirds so much pseudoscientific medicine and how the belief systems that underlie so so much of alternative medicine resembel the belief systems that underlie religion. However, in retrospect, I suspect that I might have gone a little too far. Although the two share many aspects, alternative medicine is not in general a religion (with the possible exception of reiki, which, for all intents and purposes, is faith…
drorzel | June 23, 2010I don't remember who pointed me at this transcript of Deepak Chopra interviewing Michio Kaku, but if I remember who it was, I fully intend to hate them.
DC: Is our conversation affecting something in another galaxy right now?
MK: In principle. What we're talking about right is affecting another galaxy far, far beyond the Milky Way Galaxy. Now when the Big Bang took place we think that most of the matter probably was vibrating in unison.
DC: So it was already correlated?
MK: It was already correlated. We call this coherence or correlation. As the universe expanded, we're still correlated, we'…
oracknows | April 14, 2010With all the anti-vaccine nonsense going on and my feeling the obligation to fire a broadside at "America's doctor," there was a tasty bit of woo that totally escaped my attention from an old "friend" of the blog. Actually, he's an old "friend" of many skeptical blogs, both here on ScienceBlogs and around the blogosphere. In fact, it's a man so steeped in only the finest quantum woo that I once coined a name for it: Choprawoo.
Yes, we're talkin' Deepak "Quantum Consciousness" Chopra! He's back and woo-ier than ever in--where else?--that repository of woo, quackery, and anti-vaccine lunacy,…
oracknows | January 12, 2009The seemingly never-ending quest of advocates of unscientific medicine, the so-called "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) movement is to convince policy makers, patients, and physicians that, really and truly, it no longer deserves the qualifier of "alternative," that it is in fact mainstream and even "scientific." That very search for respectability without accountability is the very reason why "alternative" medicine originally morphed into CAM in order to soften the "alternative" label a decade or two ago. Increasingly, however, advocates of such highly implausible medical…