ADE 651 Update

A while back I wrote a list of the 5 worst quacks currently operating. One of them was Jim McCormick, the director of a company called ATSC which sold useless pieces of plastic to the military in Iraq and Afghanistan to use as bomb detectors. It’s kind of a stretch to call him a quack, I guess, because that term usually refers to woo dealing with medicine and not so much the war profiteering variety.

The 5 Worst Quacks Around Today

I’m going to have to limit this list to people who are currently practicing some form of quackery, because if I tried to make a historical list I’d feel compelled to handicap for that person’s period in history. So Isaac Newton, who was literally one of the smartest people ever, believed in alchemy. The great 17th century astronomer Johannes Kepler believed in astrology. Lots of the ancient Greek philosophers believed in demons. Demons that controlled their thoughts. Seriously.

But you’ve really got to cut those people some slack because of how primitive human understanding was in their times. If you’re living in a technologically advanced society today, as the five below are, you really have no excuse for that kind of ignorance. So to make it a level playing field, here are what I think are the worst purveyors of antiscientific pseudomedicine around today.