Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definition: Quackery |
QuackeryNoun1. The dishonesty of a charlatan. Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
Date "quackery" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1792. (references) |
| Domain | Definition |
Health | The fraudulent misrepresentation of the diagnosis and treatment of disease. (references) |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
Quackery is the practice of unproven, ineffective medicine, usually in order to make money or to maintain a position of power.Quackery has existed all throughout human history, and probably pre-dates the emergence of effective medicine. The nineteenth century era of the rise of mass marketing of patent medicines is usually considered to have been a "golden age" of quackery.
Quackery is still abundant today; some forms of herbal therapy, miracle cures, and diet and fitness regimes, and all forms of homeopathy, are considered a form of quackery by many medical experts.
These treatments persist for a variety of reasons:
- The placebo effect. Medicines or treatments, known to have no effect on a disease, can have major effects on a person's perception of their illness. People report reduced pain, and increased well being, all because they don't know their treatment does nothing. The placebo effect is extreme in the treatment of depression. Some studies show up to 80% of people will report an improvement in their condition after taking a sugar pill.
- False hope. Most conventional practitioners consider it unethical to lie to a patient about the chance of success of their treatment. Quacks do not have these ethical constraints.
- Side effects from real treatment. Anti-cancer drugs and radical surgery can have very distressing side effects.
- Distrust of conventional medicine. Conventional medicine does not have a clean history either. Much of medicine's past was in fact quackery. Doctors are often paid a very large salary, much more than most of the people they treat. They often receive money for a consultation, without giving any treatment. Mistakes made by doctors are also reported extensively by the media. The regulatory committees of medical doctors, are doctors themselves. Quackery doesn't have to deal with their wrongs of the past, they don't call themselves quacks, they can change their name to whatever is trendy at the time. They also promote the distrust of conventional medicine, often by misinformation.
- Cost. Pharmaceutical companies and doctors charge a lot of money for their services. Quacks can easily undercut them, by providing what they call, a better treatment for much less money.
Quackery today
The most common products that are being sold, and are considered ineffective or unproven by experts are herbal medicines. These are usually harmless, and can not legally claim to cure medical conditions. In most countries there is no regulation of herbal medicines. Some herbal medicines are dangerous, some work, some are a harmless waste of money (besides a possible placebo effect).
Numerous diet programs use people's concern over their image, as a way to make money. They sell books and videos, often with ridiculous ideas about nutrition.
A more disturbing, and a practice more often acknowledged to be quackery, are the miracle cancer cures and treatments.
Many people in western countries, after losing hope with conventional medicine, go to places such as Tijuana, Mexico, where promises of effective treatment for diseases such as cancer are made. (Usually over the internet.)
At these institutions, untrained, or immoral, technicians apply all sort of useless treatments. Examples include pulsing an electrical current through the body to kill 'the bad cells', this has no effect on any cellss. These devices usually consist of a car battery, hooked up to two metal plates, in a medical-looking box. They receive a lot of money, and cite a lot of people cured. These people usually blame a conspiracy or a cover-up for the fact the treatment is not used elsewhere.
Many people die because of these places, as their tumour keeps growing, while they receive no real treatment.
History
External links
- http://www.quackwatch.org/ - Up to date information about health fraud.
- http://skepdic.com/tialtmed.html - Information about alternative therapies.
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Quackery."
Synonym: QuackerySynonym: charlatanism (n). (additional references) |
| Context | Synonyms within Context (source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus). |
Affectation | Charlatanism, quackery, shallow profundity; pretension, airs, pedantry, purism, precisianism, euphuism; teratology; (altiloquence). |
Falsehood | Lip homage, lip service; mouth honor; hollowness; mere show, mere outside; duplicity, double dealing, insincerity, hypocrisy, cant, humbug; jesuitism, jesuitry; pharisaism; Machiavelism, "organized hypocrisy"; crocodile tears, mealy-mouthedness, quackery; charlatanism, charlatanry; gammon; bun-kum, bumcombe, flam; bam, flimflam, cajolery, flattery; Judas kiss; perfidy; (bad faith); il volto sciolto i pensieri stretti. |
Unskillfulness | Noun: unskillfulness; Adjective: want of skill; incompetence, incompentency; inability, infelicity, indexterity, inexperience; disqualification, unproficiency; quackery. |
| Source: adapted from Roget's Thesaurus. | |
Crosswords: Quackery |
| English words defined with "quackery": Charlatanry ♦ empiric ♦ Mountebankery, Mountebankish ♦ Quackeries, Quackish, Quackism. (references) |
| Specialty definitions using "quackery": Little Pedlington. (references) |
| Domain | Title |
Books |
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Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Thumbnail | Description & Credit |  | Congressional surgery. Legislative quackery. Credit: Library of Congress. |
Source: pictures compiled by the editor from various references; see picture credits. | |||
| Subject | Topic | Quote |
Health | While it is often dismissed as quackery and pseudoscience by skeptics, proponents offer the theory that magnets may effect changes in cells or body chemistry, thus producing pain relief. (references) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from ICON Group International, Inc.; see credits. | ||
| "Quackery" is generally used as a noun (singular) -- approximately 100.00% of the time. "Quackery" is used about 10 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Noun (singular) | 100% | 10 | 111,207 |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Expression | Frequency per Day |
quackery | 24 |
medical quackery | 6 |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| Language | Translations for "quackery"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | |
Albanian | mashtrim (bilk, blind, bluff, bunco, bunko, caper, cheat, chicanery, chouse, circumvention, con, cozenage, crammer, deceit, deceitfulness, deception, defalcation, delusion, dodge, double dealing, duplicity, fake, false pretences, falsity, flimflam, fob, fraud, fraudulence, fraudulency, gag, gammon, gimmick, guile, gyp, humbug, imposition, imposture, jiggery pokery, juggler, jugglery, juggling, leasing, lie, manipulation, overreach, racket, racketeering, rascaldom, rascality, rig, roguery, sham, swindle, take in, trick). (various references) | |
Arabic | تدجيل, شعوذة (hankey-pankey, hanky panky, jugglery, juggling, magic, sorcery, voodoo, witchery), دجل (charlatanry, delusion, fake, fraud, hankey-pankey, hanky panky, imposture, lie). (various references) | |
Bulgarian | шарлатанство (flim-flam, hokum, humbug, imposture). (various references) | |
Czech | mastièkářství. (various references) | |
Farsi | حلیه گری , حقه بازی (Cog, Juggle, Legerdemain, Underhand), شارلاتان بازی (Sciolism). (various references) | |
Finnish | puoskaroida (practise quackery). (various references) | |
French | charlatanisme. (various references) | |
German | Quacksalberei, Kurpfuscherei. (various references) | |
Greek | γιατροσοφία, αγυρτεία (charlatanism, charlatanry, hocus pocus, jugglery), ψευτογιατρική. (various references) | |
Hebrew | וכלות (charlatanry, fraud, knavery, roguery, swindling). (various references) | |
Hungarian | szélhámosság (bunco, cole, fake, gouge, humbug, racket, roguery, scam, smart practice, swindle), kuruzslás (empiricism). (various references) | |
Italian | ciarlataneria. (various references) | |
Manx | far-lheeys (quack remedy). (various references) | |
Pig Latin | ackeryquay.(various references) | |
Portuguese | charlatanismo (sciolism), charlatanice. (various references) | |
Romanian | pehlivãnie, medicinã empiricã, escrocherie (cheat, do, fraud, humbug, knavery, monkey business, racket, skin game, snap, swindle), empirism (empiricism), şarlatanie (charlatanry, flam, humbug, imposition, imposture, skin game). (various references) | |
Russian | шарлатанство. (various references) | |
Serbo-Croatian | nadrilekarstvo. (various references) | |
Spanish | charlatanismo. (various references) | |
Swedish | kvacksalveri. (various references) | |
Thai | วิธีการหลอกลวง. (various references) | |
Turkish | sahte doktorluk, şarlatanlık (charlatanry, empiricism, sciolism). (various references) | |
Ukrainian | шарлатанство, знахарство (witchcraft). (various references) | |
Vietnamese | thủ đoạn của anh bất t i. (various references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references. | ||
Misspellings | |
"Quackery" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: fuckery, quacka, quacke, quacker, quakerly, quickey. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
| # of Phoneme Matches | Pronunciation | Word(s) rhyming with "quackery" (pronounced kwa"kerē) |
| 3 | -k er ē | bakery, crockery, hickory, mockery, trickery. |
Source: compiled by the editor (additional references); see credits. | ||
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
| Words within the letters "a-c-e-k-q-r-u-y" | |
-2 letters: creaky, quaker. | |
-3 letters: cakey, crake, creak, kaury, quack, quake, quaky, quare, quark, query. | |
-4 letters: acre, aery, cake, caky, care, cark, cuke, cure, ecru, eyra, kyar, quay, quey, race, rack, racy, rake, reck, ruck, ryke, urea, yack, yare, year, yerk, yeuk, yuca, yuck. | |
-5 letters: ace, arc, are, ark, auk, aye, car, cay, cry, cue, cur. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
| 1. Definition 2. Synonyms 3. Crosswords 4. Usage: Commercial | 5. Images: Photo Album 6. Quotations: Non-fiction 7. Usage Frequency 8. Expressions: Internet | 9. Translations: Modern 10. Derivations 11. Rhymes 12. Anagrams | 13. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
