Natural Nontoxic Herbal Cleansers

Here’s a funny thing I happened on yesterday. Sort of happened – I was looking up the Dictionary because it’s being released in the US this month, so that’s why I saw this, but I happened on it now rather than a year ago, and that’s happening because Nick just mentioned Richard Carrier the other day and I put the article he mentioned in Flashback – quite unaware that he had written to Skeptical Inquirer about the Dictionary. So that’s amusing. To me.

But Richard Carrier’s letter is much more so.

I found it quite amusing to find the last page of Phil Mole’s review of The Dictionary of Fashionable Nonsense (May/June 2005) making the correct observation that “natural often serves as a synonym for good, thereby implying that all natural herbal remedies are better than ‘artificial’ scientific” ones, then quoting the Dictionary’s lampooning of “herbs” as “natural, organic, pure, wholesome” and “much better because not chemical–chemicals, of course, are toxic.” Okay. Now look down on the very same page where you put the “Top Ten Best Sellers” in the science category. Look at number seven: The Naturally Clean Home: 101 Safe and Easy Herbal Formulas for Nontoxic Cleansers.” That hits the trifecta! Natural. Herbal. Toxic. A science best seller? I guess fashionable nonsense really is fashionable.

Hah! On the same page. Very cool.

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