Now on ScienceBlogs: The Galaxy's Biggest Valentine
"A statement of fact cannot be insolent." The miscellaneous ramblings of a surgeon/scientist on medicine, quackery, science, pseudoscience, history, and pseudohistory (and anything else that interests him)
Orac is the nom de blog of a (not so) humble pseudonymous surgeon/scientist with an ego just big enough to delude himself that someone, somewhere might actually give a rodent's posterior about his miscellaneous verbal meanderings, but just barely small enough to admit to himself that few will. (Continued here, along with a DISCLAIMER that you should read before reading any medical discussions here.)
Orac's old Blog is archived at Archived Insolence.
December 31, 2006
Category: Skepticism/critical thinking
The host of next week's Skeptics' Circle asks: What's the worst argument you can think of? I think it's as good a question to close 2006 up with as any, and certainly there have been a lot of really bad...
Posted by Orac at 2:01 PM • 22 Comments •
Category: Music
One of the great things about blogging is that I can do things that I always wanted to do but would never get hired in a million years to do, for example, to be a rock critic. Prior to blogging,...
Posted by Orac at 10:46 AM • 2 Comments •
December 30, 2006
Category: Medicine
It's a tragedy any time a child dies of AIDS or any other disease, but this case would not have garnered any press attention had it not been for the fact that Eliza Jane's mother, Christine Maggiore, happens to be a very high profile member of a movement that professes "skepticism" (more like outright denial, actually) that HIV causes AIDS, despite the overwhelming scientific, epidemiologic, and clinical evidence to the contrary. Based on her belief, she had refused to take antiretroviral drugs or to have Eliza Jane tested for HIV.
Posted by Orac at 6:01 PM • •
Category: Medicine
Dean Esmay, who likes to present himself to his readers as a hard-nosed "skeptic," but is in actuality a rather credulous fellow, at least when it comes to HIV "dissidents" and seemingly not understanding why it's such a bad idea to teach "intelligent design" creationism in the science classroom in public schools, is not happy with me, not happy with me at all. On Saturday, as I was about to sit down to watch the Michigan-Ohio State game, I noticed an influx of referrals here from his blog. Given that I hadn't recalled seeing referrals here from Dean before, I checked it out his blog and, amidst a self-congratulatory tirade against bloggers who considered the Eliza Jane Scovill case a tragic example of what can happen to a child when her parents believe won't accept the science showing that HIV causes AIDS, found this comment regarding the case of Eliza Jane, the daughter of HIV denialist Christine Maggiore, who died in May and whose autopsy showed that she had AIDS-associated pneumonia:
Posted by Orac at 2:01 PM • 1 Comments •
Category: Announcements
Yes, after a week off, both from work and (mostly) from blogging, I'm back. I know I promised the occasional new material, but I found that not blogging for a week was actually a good thing and thus didn't post...
Posted by Orac at 11:16 AM • 1 Comments •
Category: Medicine
While I am on vacation, I'm reprinting a number of "Classic Insolence" posts to keep the blog active while I'm gone. (It also has the salutory effect of allowing me to move some of my favorite posts from the old...
Posted by Orac at 9:01 AM • •
December 29, 2006
Category: Blog carnivals
New Years Day is almost upon us, and soon 2006 will be history. It's been a great year for the Skeptics' Circle, with some truly creative and entertaining takes on what, nearing the end of its second year of existence,...
Posted by Orac at 4:06 PM • •
Category: Medicine
Over the weekend, I visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art. My wife and I were interested primarily in two exhibits: Vincent Van Gogh: The Drawings and The Art of Medicine in Ancient Egypt. As you might expect, my wife was more interested in the Van Gogh exhibit, and I was more interested in the Egyptian exhibit.
Posted by Orac at 1:01 PM • 1 Comments •
Category: Friday Woo
While I am on vacation, I'm reprinting a number of "Classic Insolence" posts to keep the blog active while I'm gone. (It also has the salutory effect of allowing me to move some of my favorite posts from the old...
Posted by Orac at 9:16 AM • 12 Comments •
December 28, 2006
Category: Medicine
In my article, I pointed out that the vast majority of the clinical evidence indicates that mercury in vaccines does not cause autism; that there is no convincing (or even suggestive) scientific or clinical evidence that chelation therapy does anything to improve the symptoms of autism; and that giving IV EDTA was dangerous. A certain commenter infested the comments section of these two posts with impassioned defenses of a certain chelationist by the name of Dr. Rashid Buttar, a man who uses a "transdermal" form of chelation therapy to "treat" autism, posting long (and lame) justifications for why Dr. Buttar can't seem to be bothered to do some very basic tests to demonstrate that his transdermal DMPS (TD-DMPS) actually gets absorbed through the skin into the blood, much less chelates any mercury (as he claims it does), much less "cures" autism.
Posted by Orac at 6:01 PM • 4 Comments •
Orac 02.13.2012
Tim Lambert 02.01.2012
PZ Myers 02.02.2012
ERV 11.26.2011
Orac 01.26.2012
