Annoyingly, I Can't Even Accuse Her of Being One Strand Short of a Double Helix

Last night, Channel 4 showed the second half of Richard Dawkins' The Enemies Of Reason, in which the esteemed professor didn't bother to demolish a variety of silly quack "medicines". As another blog said, "Today’s episode of the Enemies of Reason series has people promoting such odd theories that Dawkins only has to smile politely and give them enough rope..."

Here is my favourite, the first one in the show:

A woman who had played tape-recorded chanting and spoken a lot of nonsense about sunbeams and pearls told Dawkins (author, let's not forget, of The Selfish Gene, and whose website has a DNA molecule prominently on every page) that "most people's" DNA has two strands. Dawkins questioned her on this, so she dutifully explained that some people have a few more strands. This, apparently, is because "in Atlantis," (back in the day) "we had twelve, but since then... we've forgotten who we are". After that, she waved her hands about in a rather stupid way and acted as if this had boosted Dawkins' DNA to the full Atlantean dodecahelix.

An enormous pair of scissors has appeared in the sky directly above the laboratory...