I believe this is a very useful tool for evaluating all the various health claims you encounter:
Carl Sagan’s Baloney Detection Kit
The health world is currently plagued by misinformation and pseudoscience. But with the Baloney Detection Kit, it should be easier to separate fact from fiction.
AcroTrekker 
Carl Sagan was one of my role models and heroes; his untimely death deprived the world of one of the most effective spokespersons for science. Thank you for posting this piece; it’s one I hadn’t previously encountered. While absolutely correct to warn about health scams and quackery, he isn’t, however, able to explain the placebo effect. Most of us have encountered it; placebos have a niggling habit of ‘working’ far more often than they should. One example I can offer: for years I successfully treated nettle stings with dock leaves, until it was demonstrated that what I mistook to be dock was in fact the leaf of horseradish. Of course it never worked again.
Interesting blog you’re running; all the best with it.