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Prague - Sisyfos, the Czech Skeptics' Club, has bestowed the founder of holotropic breathing and a family of astrologers with the main 2007 Erratic Boulder prize for misleading the public .
"With 42 nominations, we had a lot to choose from," said famous astrophysicist Jiří Grygar, head of the committee for the anti-prizes and chairman of the Learned Society of the Czech Republic. Grygar was one of the first Czech scientist to popularize astrology, having written non-academic books on the topic and creating a TV series in the 1980's called "Wide Open Windows of the Universe".
Holotropic intoxication
The 10th anniversary of the Erratic Boulders awards called for a special treat to complement the usual golden, silver and bronze prizes. Sisyfos therefore awarded two diamond arch-boulders for the blunder of the decade.
One went to Czech-American Professor Stanislav Grof, inventor of the so-called holotropic breathwork, a fast-breathing method that over-oxygenates the brain and makes the semi-intoxicated person hallucinate.
Stanislav Grof already received an Erratic Boulder for his work in 2000, but he has made progress since then: In a new book, he explains he was an ancient Egyptian priest in his past life.
The other diamond arch-boulder went to Antonín Baudyš Sr. and Antonín Baudyš Jr. In October 2001, Baudyš Sr., who was the Czech defence minister in the 1990s, prophesised that George W. Bush would die in office in mid-2003.
But the US president ignored his forecast, just like Czech Social Democrat chief Jiří Paroubek, for whom the Baudyš family predicted major success in the last general election, the one that the right wingers won in the end.
An armed guard wearing dark glasses brought the diamond prizes in an armoured suitcase. For now, they are mere soot in a bag, but if this form of shapeless carbon is compressed under high temperature, a diamond will emerge. The skillful laureates will certainly handle that at home provided they don't leave the prizes in the Sisyfos safe.
Afraid of drug makers
Dr. Karel Erben, deputy chairman of the Association of Patients, was brave enough to pick up the prize for 2007. Dr. Erben promotes the treatment of tumours, as well as heart and venous diseases, by reducing the level of homocysteine, an amino acid found in the human body. The problem is that no serious research has proved homocysteine reduction would cure an oncology patient.
Karel Erben had five minutes to deliver a thank you speech, in which he suggested pharmaceutical companies, anxious about their profits, may want to take his life.
Barefoot runner
Beáta and Július Pataky, also Erratic Boulder laureates, asked their publisher Jiří Kuchař to represent them at the ceremony. Kuchař stressed Mr. Pataky regularly ran the Prague marathon barefoot.
There is symbolism behind this, as the Patakys are healers who can allegedly cure people by pressing the soles of their feet.
They also tell patients to drink urine (!).
The Patakys obviously do not have to fear a pharmaceutical industry plot, because they can protect themselves with "mental energy barriers".
Biotronic legacy
Healer Tomáš Pfeiffer also won an Erratic Boulder. Thanks to donations, he is building a big "Biotronic Social Aid Centre" in Prague and treating his patients with so-called biotronic energy.
In the anti-prize report, the skeptics cited the example of an extrasensory transfer that Pfeiffer mentioned in a lecture in Plzeň last May. He told the tragic story of a dying woman whom he was unable to save. But by accident, he telepathically made her become concerned about his old car, and the woman bequeathed her own vehicle to him.
Adapted and republished by the Prague Daily Monitor
