"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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January 31, 2008
Category: Alternative medicine • Announcements • Blog carnivals • Medicine • Pseudoscience • Quackery • Skepticism/critical thinking • Skeptics' Circle
Ack! The new Skeptic's Circle is here! Yes, the 79th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle has convened over at Podblack Blog, and it's another great collection of skeptical blogging. So why am I disturbed? I just realized that I've utterly...
Posted by Orac at 1:51 PM • 3 Comments
Category: Alternative medicine • Medicine • Politics • Quackery
I used to be somewhat of a supporter of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM). I really did. This was back when I was more naïve and idealistic. Indeed, when I first read Wally Sampson's article Why...
Posted by Orac at 8:46 AM • 37 Comments
Category: Alternative medicine • Announcements • Antivaccination lunacy • Autism • Medicine
Three and a half months after Kevin Leitch announced that he was shutting down his most excellent blog, Left Brain/Right Brain, it appears that, thankfully, he's changed his mind. Appearing yesterday on the archives of his blog, Kev announced that...
Posted by Orac at 12:00 AM • 8 Comments
January 30, 2008
Category: History • Holocaust • News of the Weird
Like most people, I have my limits. Actually, I have a pretty high tolerance for tastelessness. It's a necessity in a world like this, where tastelessness increasingly goes beyond the pale. But even I am not above finding something like...
Posted by Orac at 2:31 PM • 33 Comments
Category: Alternative medicine • Medicine • Quackery
A few days ago, I was amused by a term coined by Dr. R.W. The term, "quackademic medicine," was meant to describe the unholy fusion of non-science- and non-evidence-based woo that has infiltrated academic medicine to a disturbing extent over...
Posted by Orac at 8:53 AM • 77 Comments
January 29, 2008
Category: Antivaccination lunacy • Autism • Entertainment/culture • Medicine • Popular culture • Quackery • Television
Last week, I did one of my inimitable rants about an ABC television show set to air on Thursday called Eli Stone, in which a lawyer sues a pharmaceutical company for "mercuritol" (an obvious allusion to thimerosal) in vaccines and...
Posted by Orac at 4:00 PM • 20 Comments
Category: Medicine
The other day I mentioned the now-infamous magic Alzheimer's helmet, a device being hyped to the press by a group of scientists on the basis of very little data. Believe it or not, of all organizations, ABC News has published...
Posted by Orac at 12:30 PM • 5 Comments
Category: Biology • History • Hitler Zombie • Humor • Intelligent design/creationism • Pseudoscience • Religion • Science • Skepticism/critical thinking
In nondescript dressing room in a nondescript studio in a nondescript office building in in a nondescript industrial park, a short, pudgy 63-year-old man with the stereotypical demeanor of a particularly boring economist was trying to squeeze into a pair...
Posted by Orac at 9:00 AM • 19 Comments
January 28, 2008
Category: Medicine
Several readers have e-mailed me this story. It's about a device developed in the U.K.. Based on near infrared light (NIR), the device, it is claimed by its creator, will be a major step forward for the treatment of Alzheimer's...
Posted by Orac at 2:00 PM • 13 Comments
Category: Alternative medicine • Antivaccination lunacy • Autism • Medicine • Quackery
Pity poor David Kirby. Nearly three years ago now, he published his now-infamous Evidence of Harm: Mercury in Vaccines and the Autism Epidemic, A Medical Mystery. Hooking up with the most vocal of the mercury militia, his book blamed mercury...
Posted by Orac at 9:00 AM • 55 Comments
January 27, 2008
Category: Intelligent design/creationism • Pseudoscience • Religion • Skepticism/critical thinking
He really does....
Posted by Orac at 5:00 PM • 5 Comments
Category: Alternative medicine • Humor • Medicine • Quackery
With all the woo infiltrating hospitals these days, as I've lamented about in constructing my Academic Woo Aggregator, it was only a matter of time until these ways of thinking started to infiltrate other lines of work. Why not "alternative...
Posted by Orac at 12:46 PM • 21 Comments
This story is a couple of weeks old, but I've only just come across it. It reminds me that there may be some things worse than death, and this is one of them.
Posted by Orac at 10:25 AM • 10 Comments
January 26, 2008
Category: Alternative medicine • Antivaccination lunacy • Autism • Entertainment/culture • Medicine • Popular culture • Quackery
I'll give Don Imus credit for one thing. He's predictable and consistent. He never fails to deliver the stupid when it comes to vaccines and autism. True, his wife may take the stupid to hysterically malignant levels when she decides...
Posted by Orac at 10:01 AM • 18 Comments
January 25, 2008
Category: Announcements • Blog carnivals • Skeptics' Circle
Winter has settled in well and good around these parts, maybe not as brutal as around P.Z.'s abode but bad enough. So what does one do on a cold, blustery day? If you're a skeptical blogger, you could whip up...
Posted by Orac at 2:41 PM • 0 Comments
Category: Alternative medicine • Friday Woo • Humor • Medicine • Quackery • Skepticism/critical thinking
One of the favorite failings in logic and science among the woo-friendly crowd is the ever-famous one of confusing correlation with causation, also known as non causa pro causa, which means "non-cause for the cause." Examples of this are...
Posted by Orac at 8:55 AM • 29 Comments
