One former Tory minister said: “We need to call out this hokum”.

I considered joining the eclipse crowds in Carbondale, Ill., where a news report on Atlas Obscura said that old-time apocalyptic fever — also known as modern-day conspiracy theorist hokum — had taken hold.

He met proselytizers who told him they had personally raised people from the dead, or witnessed mass graves come back to life, which Hancock called “hooey and hokum.”

For all the creakily derivative supernatural hokum on display, the ghosts that haunt this movie turn out to be all too persuasively real.

Continued research into emergent branches of regenerative medicine is still a worthwhile pursuit despite the anti-aging hokum, particularly given the need to advance therapies around stem cells, immunomodulation and transplantation.