David Colquhoun is well-known for his campaigning against the introduction of academic Woo into UK universities, challenging the content of homeopathy courses and exposing the ludicrous content of their examinations.
In the US, the illustrious blogger Orac has been doing the same for a number of years and has compiled a list of academic institutions offering quackademic courses. He lists over forty such institutions here in his Academic Woo Aggregator.
It is quite extraordinary that so much mystical nonsense is taught under the guise of academic authority and therefore understandable when so many people go along with these ideas in the complete absence of any evidence. Getting accepted into an academic institution gives these wacky ideas credibility amongst the general public. After all, anyone coming out of a university with a degree is assumed to have studied a subject which has some academic credibility.
Now that is no longer the case. As Orac has shown, academic institutions will promote anything as long as there's money in it.
Bob Lloyd has studied in four universities and has degrees in Biochemistry, Mathematics, and Computer Science. After a long career in publishing, teaching, and software engineering, he is now retired and lives in Andalucia in the South of Spain with his wife and rather ancient cat.
