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Respectful Insolence

"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)

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Who (or what) is Orac?

orac.jpg Orac is the nom de blog of a 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.

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June 30, 2007

Ever wonder what you could do with the hole in CDs?

Category: Humor

Well, now you know....

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Bad covers

Category: Entertainment/cultureMusicPopular culture

In keeping my (temporary), retreat from medical blogging for the weekend, I thought you might enjoy as much as I did this list of the 100 Worst Cover Songs. I do have a few objections, though. For one thing, I...

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June 29, 2007

I poured a death potion for my sick baby!

Category: Entertainment/cultureHistoryHumorMedicine

I love these old ads. Remember, keep fresh batteries in your house or you might poison your baby! The tag line sounds almost like the reaction of an antivaccination loon to the polio vaccine....

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The "just another study" gambit

Category: Antivaccination lunacyAutismMedicineQuackery

I wrote about this classic crank gambit a bit about a week and a half ago, emphasizing that no amount of studies will convince a crank. Now, MarkH at denialism.com takes on the same issue in more detail so that...

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Your Friday Dose of Woo: Your interactive quantum gyroscopic homeopathic DNA activating....

Category: Alternative medicineFriday WooHumorMedicinePseudoscienceQuackerySkepticism/critical thinking

Here's something I've wanted to try for a while now. It'll either be wildly successful and popular, along the lines of You Might Be an Altie If..., or it'll be an utter failure, sinking into oblivion. Which one it ends...

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June 28, 2007

More on the Generation Rescue poll

Category: Alternative medicineAntivaccination lunacyAutismMedicineQuackery

Yesterday, I did a deconstruction of Generation Rescue's dubious "study" (in reality an automated telephone poll) that claims to show that vaccines increase the rate of autism and other "neurologic diseases." Now skeptical blogger extraordinaire Prometheus has posted his own...

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Deepak Chopra's woo-ful whine

Category: Alternative medicineMedicinePseudoscienceQuackerySkepticism/critical thinking

Pity poor Deepak Chopra. I've abused him on this blog many times, even coining a word ("Choprawoo") for the silliness that emanates from his keyboard every time he posts his inanity to the Huffington Post or his own IntentBlog. I...

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David Kirby's Osama bin Laden vaccine gambit, revisited

Category: Antivaccination lunacyBioethicsMedicineQuackery

Remember a couple of weeks ago, when I wrote about how mercury militia buddy David Kirby invoked the Osama bin Laden gambit in discussing the Autism Omnibus trial? I wondered where Kirby's claim came from and what vaccine components were "derived from pigs," as did a number of you. Now I know, thanks to a reader.

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Poor Behe, now he's in for it

Category: EvolutionIntelligent design/creationismPseudoscienceScienceSkepticism/critical thinking

You may have noticed that I haven't commented much on Michael Behe's recent book, The Edge of Evolution, other than to bemoan its presence in the Evolution section of the University of Chicago Barnes & Noble. I have, however, read...

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June 27, 2007

Am I an old blogger?

Category: BloggingMedicine

It was with sadness that I saw fellow medical blogger Dr. Charles' announcement that he is taking a break ("perhaps a long break," as he puts it) from blogging. He points out that he's been at it for almost three...

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Condolences to Lindsay Beyerstein

Category: BloggingPersonal

Please take a moment to head over to Majikthise and pay your respects to Lindsay, whose father, Barry L. Beyerstein, died yesterday. Dr. Beyerstein was a prominent skeptic and very active in the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. He also served...

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Fun with phone surveys and vaccines

Category: Alternative medicineAntivaccination lunacyAutismMedicinePseudoscienceQuackerySkepticism/critical thinking

J. B. Handley never ceases to amaze me how much he is willing to torture me with his abuses of science, never mind his childish attempts to annoy me by cybersquatting domain names that he thinks I want. So there...

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June 26, 2007

And now for some NIH science wonkiness

Category: MedicineScience

If you're not into the ins and outs of applying for NIH funding, this one may be a bit too wonky for you. I'm linking, however, to a rather interesting discussion of how to go about getting funding from the...

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The Autism Omnibus: The difference between real scientists and crank scientists

Category: Alternative medicineAutismMedicineQuackery

The Autism Omnibus trial continued last week, which was devoted primarily to the government's case. Consequently, there were a variety of real experts, as opposed to the pseudoexperts called by the prosecution last week. With only the occasional hiccup, they...

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June 25, 2007

I have this syndrome!

Category: MedicineNews of the Weird

Finally, there's a word for a feeling that many people have no doubt experienced many times: Some call it "phantom vibration syndrome." Others prefer "vibranxiety" -- the feeling when you answer your vibrating cellphone, only to find it never vibrated...

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"Darwinism": A "marketing problem"?

Category: EvolutionIntelligent design/creationismPseudoscienceReligionScienceSkepticism/critical thinking

Longtime readers of this blog may recall Pat Sullivan, Jr. He first popped up as a commenter here two years ago, when I first dove into applying skepticism and critical thinking to the pseudoscientific contention that vaccines in general or...

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