"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 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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November 30, 2007
Category: Announcements • Blog carnivals • Skeptics' Circle
I would be remiss in my duties as organizer of the Skeptics' Circle if I were to forget to remind you that it won't be long before the next Skeptics' Circle comes around the pike. Indeed, the next meeting of...
Posted by Orac at 3:15 PM • 0 Comments
Category: Alternative medicine • Friday Woo • Medicine • Physics • Quackery • Science • Skepticism/critical thinking
I don't know what it is about woo-meisters and vibration. I know I've said this before, but it seems to come up so often that I can't help but repeat it. Everything is vibration. Everything. And if it' not...
Posted by Orac at 10:01 AM • 20 Comments
Category: Religion
I haven't said much about Gillian Gibbons, the unfortunate schoolteacher from Britain who fell afoul of religious fundamentalism in Sudan when she did a class exercise in which her class picked a name for a Teddy Bear. Unfortunately, the name...
Posted by Orac at 9:01 AM • 33 Comments
Category: Biology • Evolution • Politics • Pseudoscience • Religion • Science • Skepticism/critical thinking
Sometimes I have a hard time not concluding that we are....
Posted by Orac at 8:15 AM • 23 Comments
Category: Bioethics • Cancer • Medicine • Quackery • Religion
It looks as though the Jehovah's Witnesses have claimed another life. This time, though, it wasn't an adult, as it was recently. This time, though, through the indoctrination inherent in the Jehovah's Witness religion and, incredibly and inexcusably, the acquiescence...
Posted by Orac at 1:23 AM • 28 Comments
November 29, 2007
Category: Biology • Evolution • Intelligent design/creationism • Politics • Science • Skepticism/critical thinking
Heard on the radio this morning, a commenter responding to a radio talk show host's pointing out to him that Mike Huckabee doesn't accept evolution as valid. This is as close as I can remember what he said, but the...
Posted by Orac at 4:07 PM • 59 Comments
Category: Blogging • Medicine • Science
...for reaching a milestone in blogging. One thing that's always puzzled me is why Abel's traffic isn't much higher (and mine lower, to be honest). True, I post much more frequently than he does, but that alone doesn't explain it....
Posted by Orac at 12:08 PM • 2 Comments
Category: Antivaccination lunacy • Autism • Medicine • Politics • Pseudoscience • Quackery • Skepticism/critical thinking
We've had one example this week of people with minds so open that their brains fell out at the Oxford Union, which invited Holocaust denier and British National Party leader Nick Griffin to "discuss free speech." Now, sadly, I see...
Posted by Orac at 8:55 AM • 22 Comments
November 28, 2007
Category: Anti-Semitism • History • Holocaust • Holocaust denial • World War II
Max Hastings apparently disagrees with the disgust that I and many others expressed over Holocaust denier David Irving's recent appearance at the Oxford Union. I'd almost agree with him, except that (1) I highly doubt, from reading the accounts, that...
Posted by Orac at 2:20 PM • 8 Comments
Category: Alternative medicine • Clinical trials • Medicine • Surgery
You've probably heard the oft-repeated charge of "alternative" medicine advocates. If you get into a debate or conversation with one, you can almost count on seeing or hearing it before too long. Indeed, we heard a variant of this very...
Posted by Orac at 8:56 AM • 13 Comments
November 27, 2007
Category: Anti-Semitism • History • Holocaust • Holocaust denial
If you've been a regular reader here, one thing you know about me is just how much I detest Holocaust denial. What I detest even more, however, is when a Holocaust denier wraps his Nazi apologia and anti-Semitism in the...
Posted by Orac at 2:31 PM • 47 Comments
Category: Alternative medicine • Medicine • Pseudoscience • Quackery • Science • Skepticism/critical thinking
I was originally planning to do a real science post today. Indeed, there are at least two or three interesting studies that have been released in the last month or two that I've been meaning to write up, you...
Posted by Orac at 8:57 AM • 25 Comments
November 26, 2007
Category: Bioethics • Medicine
Fellow ScienceBlogger Abel Pharmboy over at Terra Sig pointed me in the direction of a rather fascinating and disturbing article about physicians being recruited as "thought leaders" by pharmaceutical companies. Abel's discussion is well worth reading for yourself, but I...
Posted by Orac at 2:09 PM • 6 Comments
Category: Alternative medicine • Antivaccination lunacy • Medicine • Quackery
While contemplating the burning stupidity that is Jenny McCarthy over the weekend as she mindlessly parroted some of the worst misinformation of the antivaccine movement and assured an interviewer that she would , all the while solemnly proclaiming that, were...
Posted by Orac at 8:44 AM • 68 Comments
November 25, 2007
Category: Alternative medicine • Clinical trials • Humor • Medicine • Quackery
As usual, The Onion gets it right, particularly the part about all acupuncture being "fake" acupuncture. By the way, this is the study the article is referring to. Meanwhile, Mark Crislip weighs in on this study and some other recent...
Posted by Orac at 2:00 PM • 7 Comments
I've been very remiss in featuring what has become, from a very early point in this blog's history, its de facto mascot. Maybe it's because he's just been so busy being BEOC (Big Enema on Campus), or maybe it's a...
Posted by Orac at 8:36 AM • 3 Comments
