Talk:Quackery

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List of quacks?[edit]

I notice ZooGuard has edited out what was admittedly becoming a long list of quacks with the comment " if the "see also" section starts looking like a category, it should become a category." and I can see the point but now the article seems a little bit of a dead end.

I toyed with the idea of adding a direct "see also" link to the category: woo-meisters / pseudoscience promotors but I'm thinking it might be nice to have a catagory: Quacks or something a touch more specific.

Any thoughts? --Longdog (talk) 15:29, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

The alternative is to put those links in a "Quacks" or "List of quacks" or "Notable quacks" section, with a brief description of each one. It will also serve as an additional justification for the existence of this article.--ZooGuard (talk) 19:45, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

Can bioduck and geoduck be brought into the discussion? (... And if you want Quarkery, go to Finnegans Wake and the Large Hadron Collider). 82.44.143.26 (talk) 16:43, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

I added former President Donald Trump to examples of quackery for promoting questionable remedies for COVID-19. He may not have pretended to be a medical professional, but he has used such credulity as millions have to disseminate false, misleading, and even dangerous advice on how to deal with COVID-19 Pbrower2a (talk) 04:44, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

Quicksilver?[edit]

Question, does the word "quacksalver" relate in any way to the word "quicksilver" (which is sometimes used to refer to mercury, and IIRC originated from alchemy)? Or is it just a coincidence? I seem to recall hearing that some snake-oil formulations did in fact contain Mercury (along with just about anything else). If there's any connection between the two terms, that should be mentioned, and even if there's no connection a disambiguation link might be useful. --Phantomreader42 (talk) 16:38, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

Dictionary etymologies say the same as the article - it comes from Dutch and means something like "salve peddler".--ZooGuard (talk) 16:42, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

Definitions[edit]

Does not the tag 'Though not a stub by pure word count, this article lacks depth of content' define quackery itself? Anna Livia (talk) 19:01, 19 March 2019 (UTC)

Why does "weight loss success stories" lead to here?[edit]

Typing or selecting "weight loss success stories" in the search bar redirects here but I don't see why it should do so. I know there's a lot of quack regarding weight loss but the article makes no mention of such. The phrase in particular being redirected here seems to imply that successful weight loss itself is somehow quackery; which is just wrong to say the least. Whether that was the purpose or it was the result of error I think it should be removed or changed. I'm very new to editing this wiki so I don't know how to do so myself. E-morality (talk) 07:21, 5 April 2021 (UTC)

That phrase leads to an empty page. The only redirects beginning with "weight" redirect to Fad diet and weigh down diet. What did you type exactly? Avida Dollarsher again 16:44, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
I simply typed "weight" and it showed "weight loss success stories" as a clickable option in the dropdown which upon clicking redirected to this article. It doesn't seem to do that anymore but it did prior to me creating this post. E-morality (talk) 19:09, 5 April 2021 (UTC)
Weight Loss Success Stories was created by a spambot in 2012. After it was deleted, a user decided it should redirect here for some reason. When I saw your comment earlier I deleted it, probably should’ve said something to avoid this confusion. Christopher (talk) 19:12, 5 April 2021 (UTC)