About

The web is a fantastic democratising tool. It enables more people than ever before in history to publish their ideas and to potentially reach a worldwide audience.

However, anything potent enough to yield benefits is also potent enough to cause harm and this we see in the astonishing amount of nonsense spread on the web. Some of this nonsense is merely funny and innocent, but a lot is downright dangerous, and sharks lurk around every corner to take advantage of the uneducated, the gullible and the desperate.

The mission of the House Of Quack is to present information separating quackery (alternology) from medicine, superstition from reality, and myth from fact.

There will be three types of articles on this site:

Investigative articles
Every article will be thoroughly researched, no matter how much effort this entails. As a result, new posts may not appear on a regular, pre-scheduled basis. Proper research takes time.

Explanatory articles
Articles that explain terminology, how something is done, why something is done...

Opinion articles
Articles that do not belong in the first two categories, but are thought to belong on this site.

Questions, criticism and comments are welcome and will not be censored in any way, except for obvious spam. However, I will do my best to reply to them.

Please also read the important information below.

I bid you welcome to the House Of Quack!

Bart

info@HouseOfQuack.com

About the articles at the House Of Quack
All articles are written by me, Bart B. Van Bockstaele. I am a computer programmer and translator, with a life-long interest in science, including but not limited to medicine.

I am not a medical professional, and the information I provide must be seen in that perspective, it must never be seen as medical advice. Such is not my goal. Proper health advice is obtained from a qualified doctor (specialist).

My goal is to write about claims -including but not limited to medical claims- to present the pro and contra to the best of my abilities. It is not meant to replace any advice or information from a properly licensed medical doctor or specialist. This is very important.

One of the objectives of the site is to empower people to protect themselves from untrustworthy information. Trustworthy information with respect to your health is obtained from qualified medical personnel, with the explicit exclusion of all others, including this site.

It is not my goal to disprove or debunk. This is a skeptical blog in the sense that it does not accept anything at face value, but will attempt to find relevant evidence pertaining to a subject, to present it fairly and to present a motivated and tentative conclusion based on the information presented.

Please note that comments by visitors are exactly that: comments. They may be -and hopefully are- interesting or intriguing, but they are not to be seen as health advice. Proper health advice is obtained from a qualified doctor (specialist).

The purpose of the House Of Quack is to show a lay public how information can be evaluated, the pro and contra balanced against each other and how a tentative conclusion can be reached. As such, it is my hope to contribute to consumer/patient empowerment and to encourage the asking of relevant questions when meeting with a qualified medical doctor.

In short: it is my hope to use this site as a tool to inform the reader about critical/skeptical thinking and to encourage the reader to practice them.

This site does not, repeat not, promote anything, except for its goal to encourage critical, evidence-based thinking.

Confidentiality
This site gathers no personal data, and is not interested in doing so. It is possible to enter an e-mail address in order to be informed when new information is posted, but this goes through the Google-related Feedburner. To the best of my knowledge, I am unable to obtain e-mail addresses and/or passwords and/or other information through this process, nor am I interested in doing so.

If you contact me through the e-mail address above, all information pertaining to this e-mail, including but not limited to your e-mail address, name, address and message content and/or attached files will be kept strictly confidential unless you give explicit permission via personal e-mail to publish anything at all and then only for a specific purpose stated by you.

It is, of course, possible to publish personal information in comments. I strongly advise against this. This site is a public one and all information you disclose on it, is therefore by definition accessible to anyone with access to the Internet.

You have been warned. You ignore this at your peril.

Funding
Google (AdSense) advertisements are shown and some income might come from this. These advertisements are easy to distinguish from any other information and links on the site. I do not endorse any advertising banners appearing on this site. While clicking on them does bring the potential for income for this site, this is neither encouraged nor discouraged.

This site is funded by myself. Since it is hosted on Google's blogging platform, I am not paying for hosting except for the domain name and related costs. I pay for all of them.

Questions
If you have any questions regarding the above or regarding anything at all about this site or the information it presents, please do feel free to contact me, Bart B. Van Bockstaele, at

info@HouseOfQuack.com


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This page was last updated on 16 February 2012