Respectful Insolence

Oh. Canada.

Sat, 22 Nov 2008 10:10:02 -0500

Well, this is depressing to learn. I'd be even more depressed if I were Canadian. All I can say to my neighbors to the north is that I feel your pain, albeit belatedly. I just learned that the recently appointed Minister of State for Science and Technology within Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Cabinet is Gary Goodyear. So what's the big deal?

Gary Goodyear is an chiropractor. Not only that, but he's an acupuncturist, too. Nothing like putting someone who believes in pseudoscience in charge of science and technology. I wonder how that will work out.

Now, for Harper's next appointment, let's have an astrologer in charge of aerospace policy!

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Mandatory reading to rebut the antivaccine "too many too soon" propaganda

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 14:34:49 -0500

Leave it to an infectious disease specialist (Dr. Mark Crislip) to dismantle the most recent favorite talking point of the antivaccine fringe, namely "too many too soon," that deceptive and scientifically ignorant concept that somehow the current vaccine schedule "overwhelms" the immune system of infants, causing all manner of chronic health conditions and neurological problems, including autism. In his usual characteristic level of sarcasm that earns him a tip of the hat as far as not-so-respectful insolence goes, he entitles his lesson:

The infection schedule versus the vaccine schedule.

It should be mandatory reading for Barbara Loe Fisher, Jenny McCarthy, J.B. Handley, Dan Olmsted, Kim Stagliano, and all the other antivaccine cranks over at Age of Autism and elsewhere who endanger public health with their pseudoscientific cult belief that vaccines cause autism and all sorts of horrific complications. Not that it will do any good. These people long ago left reason and science behind when it comes to anything having to do with vaccines. But I'm an optimist. Hope springs eternal.

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Your Friday Dose of Woo: Soundscapes on the brain

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 09:00:00 -0500

I had thought about taking the day off after celebrating the 100th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle yesterday, but a skeptic's work is never done, and, besides, my wife's out of town for a couple of days. Given the choice of television, working on my program's section of our cancer center core grant or one of the two other grants I'm currently juggling, or blogging, I wonder what appeals to me more. Hmmmm....

Ah, screw it. I've been living my work nearly every waking hour for the last few days. Heck, I even got stuck at work fairly late last night because of the bane of being s surgeon, having a case scheduled as an add-on. Whenever that happens, you can be sure that it won't start until 6 PM at the earliest--and that's if you (and your patient) are lucky. I wasn't lucky, and neither was my patient. (It really sucks for a patient to have to wait so many hours to be operated on.) In any case, blogging helps me maintain my sanity in the face of this unrelenting onslaught, at least for now.

Speaking of faces, though, let's move on to week's victim--I mean subject--for the latest installment of Your Friday Dose of Woo. Back in August we met the woo-meister du jour at the heart of this particular woo. (Or, should I say, woomeister de la semaine?) I'm talking about a woman named Mary Elizabeth Wakefield. She runs an "alternative" medicine practice known as the Chi-Akra Center, and at the time she was hawking Acupuncture Facial Rejuvenation, otherwise known as an "acupuncture facelift." I had to admit, it was pure genius in that it combined an appeal to the vanity that is in us all with the promise of a "no surgery" solution to produce a face lift-like result. Best of all, in an "Emperor's New Clothes" sort of angle, who's going to admit after paying so much money for such a procedure that his or her face is just as wrinkly as it was before the treatment? Marks--I mean clients--will convince themselves that they see an improvement, no matter what.

But, hey, acupuncture deals with all those nasty needles being stuck into the skin. There might even be a little bit of blood. Who needs that hassle? Why not instead take advantage of Ms. Wakefield's new and even more appealing bit of vanity woo?

Why not take advantage of Facial Soundscapes: Harmonic Renewal™? Check it out:

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The 100th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle: The trouble with Orac

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 10:00:00 -0500

PROLOGUE

LOCATION: The Liberator, cruising through space.

GAN: Are you sure it's fully switched on?

ORAC: Of course I'm properly switched on. Having depressed the activator button what else would you expect?

CALLY: It's his voice.

BLAKE: It's exactly as though Ensor were speaking.

ORAC: Surely it is obvious even to the meanest intelligence that during my development I would naturally become endowed with aspects of my creator's personality.

AVON: The more endearing aspects by the sound of it.

ORAC: Possibly. However similarities between myself and Ensor are entirely superficial. My mental capacity is infinitely greater.

JENNA: Modest, isn't he?

ORAC: Modesty would be dishonesty.

VILA: What's wrong with being dishonest?

ORAC: Is that a question?

VILA: Yes.

ORAC: The question is futile. Were I to say that I am incapable of dishonesty how would you know if I was being dishonest or not?

BLAKE: A question for a question. Well, you're capable of evasion, anyway.

VILA: I think I've heard enough. I don't like him. Orac, be a good junk heap -- shut up.

CALLY: I agree with Vila.

ORAC: Define the words 'Shut up.'

BLAKE: Stop talking. Do not speak. Be silent.

ORAC: That is better. Our relationship will be best served if your statements are free of ambiguity.

GAN: Let's switch him off and go back to work.

BLAKE: No, wait a minute, let's find out what he is capable of. Orac, what are your limits?

ORAC: They have not yet been defined. My knowledge is virtually infinite. My secondary ability is to logically process that knowledge and make accurate predictions.

CALLY: Are you saying you can see into the future?

ORAC: The words future, present, past are meaningless.

AVON: Define 'meaningless'.

ORAC: I have the capacity to predict events that have not yet taken place.

AVON: That is not what I asked.

ORAC: In the circumstances the question is meaningless.

[Avon laughs.]

AVON: Apparently Orac now thinks he's a psychic.

VILA:: We're screwed.

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How I'm like Barack Obama

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 00:00:17 -0500

I realize this story is a week old, but it's something I wanted to do a quick blog post on, and what better excuse than to get it done before tomorrow's Skeptics' Circle? Looking at a list of The 50 facts you might not know about Barack Obama, I found out that I share quite a few interests with our President-Elect. For example:

He collects Spider-Man and Conan the Barbarian comics

I find it way cool that our new President collects comics. Until recently, I collected Spider-Man comics too; that is, until the writers decided to ruin the comic with a Brand New Day storyline that "rebooted" the series in a way that I most definitely did not like. I still collect Conan the Barbarian, as well as the resurrected Thor comic and Fantastic Four.

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Et tu, Anthony Edwards and Dustin Hoffman?

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 15:16:21 -0500

It looks as though the Jenny McCarthy woo factor has claimed two more celebrity victims' brains. If a recently viewed press release is any indication, it appears that Anthony Edwards and Dustin Hoffman are getting into the autism quackery business:

Internet Marketing Company joins Jenny McCarthy, Jim Carrey, Dustin Hoffman, Anthony Edwards and others in fight to help children with Autism.
GREENSBORO, N.C. (June 4, 2008) -- Market America announced today that it is in the development and testing stages of a new line of nutraceutical products that will support the health of children with Autism and related neurodevelopmental challenges. Specialized laboratory testing often demonstrates sub-optimal levels of vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and fatty acids in people with Autism, which can be addressed with nutritional supplements. Despite these findings, Market America found in its research that parents and health professionals alike are frustrated with the limited nutritional products available in the marketplace.

Nutritional supplementation has also been addressed by parents of children with Autism, including actors Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey. In a recent article McCarthy and Carrey authored on cnn.com, they state that one of the factors believed to have helped their son recover was vitamin supplementation, along with a gluten and caffeine free diet, detox of metals, and anti-fungals for yeast overgrowth that plagued his intestines. To read the article click on the following link: cnn.com.

Market America's announcement follows a conference held with prominent doctors who specialize in areas related to Autism at Market America's Greensboro headquarters. The doctors in attendance were Dr. Emi Hosada; an Internist in Washington State, Dr. Jim Sensenig; prominent naturopathic physician and founding president of the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians, Dr. Susan Beltz; a neuroscientist and clinical scientist and founder of the Mont Black Academy in Hook Set, NH which specializes in educating and treating children with ADHD, Metabolic Disorders and Learning Disabilities, and Dr. Anne Hines; a family and Defeat Autism Now (DAN) physician in Winston-Salem, NC.

I hope this isn't true, as I've always liked Edwards and Hoffman.

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When homeopaths kill by neglect

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 06:00:00 -0500

Busy, busy, busy.

Between work and getting ready to for the 100th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle on Thursday as I mentioned on Monday, I'm afraid I don't have time for my usual sterling gems of skeptically insolent prose or an analysis of a scientific paper that a couple of my readers have sent me. If too many science or medical bloggers haven't totally deconstructed it by then, maybe I'll take it on either on Friday or Monday. Until then, if you haven't gotten me an entry to the Skeptics' Circle yet, you still have about 12 hours left until the deadline at 6 PM EST.

In the meantime, that doesn't mean I don't have time for a quickie blog entry or two today. For example, here's a truly sad story. Actually, it's a combination of sad and a candidate for a Darwin Award. Meet Russell Jenkins. Actually, you wouldn't want to meet him now because he's dead, and here's how he got that way:

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There's no such thing as viruses?

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 08:53:10 -0500

I was in a bit of a crappy mood last night.

There were a number of reasons for this, including frustration at work trying to put together two grants, trying to revise a manuscript to resubmit it, dealing with collaborators and various other headaches. Indeed I had a splitting headache by the end of the day when I finally hit the road for the commute home. Things were so bad that I seriously considered actually going to bed and not bothering at all with the blog. I know, I know, such a thing has seldom happened in the nearly four years I've been doing this blog. It must be my obsessive personality. Or something.

I thought I might be able to lighten my dark mood by wandering over to the loonier reaches of the Internet, to websites and blogs that at the same time appall and amuse me. They appall me because all too often they promote dangerous quackery or otherwise endanger public health. Age of Autism and NaturalNews.com are among the most prominent in this category. They're also among the most amusing, AoA for its self-righteous and hypocritical rants that embrace any wacky hypothesis that comes along, as long as that hypothesis can somehow be twisted to somehow blame vaccines for autism and all manner of other ills, as its "journalists" (and I use the term very, very loosely) intone piously that they are really and truly "not antivaccine," and NaturalNews.com for its truly wacky fits of paranoid hyperbole.

I couldn't believe how I missed this gem from NaturalNews.com. Did you know There Is No Such Thing As The West Nile Virus? In fact, it's not just the West Nile Virus, but all viruses. A man named Rami Nagel seriously argues this:

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Welcome to the Age of Ignorance

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 15:32:12 -0500

Everyone knows that the quackery-friendly, antivaccine blog Age of Autism has a rather--shall we say?--hypocritical stance when it comes to free speech. For one thing, for all their complaints about censorship and not being heard by the government, its denizens frequently confuse freedom of speech with freedom from criticism. For another thing, they also ruthlessly censor comments that they do not like on their blog itself. Worst of all, they tacitly support the "outing" of pseudonymous commenters if such commenters annoy them enough.

Someone's finally gotten tired of it. Indeed, someone has decided to produce a blog where skeptics can actually comment about posts on AoA without having to go through the antivaccine, quackery-friendly filter of the "contributors" (and I use the term loosely, as the only thing they contribute to is the general level of ignorance of the population) to AoA.

Welcome to...The Age of Ignorance.

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That'll teach 'em for using an actual valid placebo control

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 08:30:01 -0500

I almost feel sorry for acupuncturists these days. Almost.

Well, not exactly. Clearly, given the infiltration of woo into academic medicine, acupuncturists are in demand even in the most allegedly "science-based" of academic medical centers. After all, acupuncture is what I like to refer to as "gateway woo," an unscientific placebo-based therapy that has somehow come to be viewed as seemingly respectable, as though there's something to it. It's not hard to see why acupuncture has achieved this status. Indeed, there was a time when I, the arch-skeptic, the guy who has built up one of the top skeptical blogs out there, the person who three years ago took over the Skeptics' Circle willingly and enthusiastically when its founder, a blogger known as Saint Nate, decided that personal reasons prevented him from continuing to maintain his blog or the Circle, was less skeptical of acupuncture than I am now. I know, I know, it's hard to believe, but it's true. Don't get me wrong, though. I never for a minute considered that the whole rigamarole about "unblocking" or "redirecting" the flow of that mystical life force known as qi had anything to do with whether or not acupuncture did or did not have efficacy treating disease or other conditions. That was clearly a holdover from the pre-scientific medicine times in which most beliefs about the causes of disease involved either the wrath of the gods or vitalism, the latter of which is, when you come right down to it, the philosophical basis upon which many "complementary and alternative" (CAM) modalities are based, especially the so-called "energy healing" modalities, such as reiki, therapeutic touch, and, of course, acupuncture.

Still, because unlike so many other "energy healing" methods, acupuncture involved an actual physical action upon the body, namely the insertion of thin needles into the skin to specified depths, it did not seem to me entirely unreasonable that there might be some sort of physiological effect that might produce a therapeutic result. And I'm apparently not unique, if the proliferation of acupuncture offerings in ostensibly "academic" medical centers is any indication. Lots of otherwise scientific and skeptical academic physicians seem willing to give acupuncture a bit of a pass because it seems to be more of a physical intervention than other forms of "energy healing." In any case, that's what I used to think until I actually did the unthinkable, until I actually started paying attention to the published scientific literature on acupuncture. That's when I started to realize that "there's no 'there' there," if you know what I mean. Badly designed studies with either no controls or utterly inadequate controls tend to be the norm in the acupuncture "literature" (and I use the term "literature," as in "scientific literature," loosely).

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100 is on the way

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 10:15:25 -0500

As hard as it is to believe, it's almost here. In a mere four days on Thursday, November 20, the 100th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle will land right here at its mothership for the first time in three years. As of this morning, I only have six submissions. That's not nearly enough! I need more, lots more, by 5 PM EST on Wednesday. Send them to orac@scienceblogs.com.

Don't make me start perusing skeptical blogs to raid and pillage posts as I see fit. You wouldn't like that, and neither would I, as I somehow managed to schedule myself to do this little shindig during a particularly insane week that may require a late nighter Wednesday in order to get this done. You know how cranky Orac gets when he doesn't get his downtime, although rest deprivation does sometimes make his circuits work in unusual (and entertaining) ways.

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The Real Estate Downfall

Sat, 15 Nov 2008 10:05:07 -0500

Downfall was a great movie, arguably the greatest movie about Adolf Hitler's final days ever made. However, it contains one scene, one incredibly powerful scene, where aides bring Hitler news that the last defenses had fallen, that the divisions that Hitler thought he had no longer existed, and that the forces that were trying to reach Berlin to fight the Russians had been repulsed. It was at this point that Hitler finally realized that there was nothing left to stop the Soviet juggernaut from taking Berlin. At this point, Hitler finally realizes that the war is lost and that there is no hope of the miraculous victory that he had believed in.

This scene has also extensively been used for parody. You knew it wouldn't be too long before it was used for the bursting of the housing bubble, the subprime mortgage crisis, and the financial meltdown that went into overdrive in September. I'm only surprised it took so long:

The last line is the best line...

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Say it ain't so, Barack! Again.

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 09:00:09 -0500

I realize that I made perhaps the biggest splash I've made on this blog in a very, very long time when I wrote about the news reports and rumors that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. was being seriously considered for a high ranking post in the new Obama Administration. Fortunately, this is not yet another post about RFK, Jr. There's only so much antivaccinationist and pseudoscientific lunacy I can take. Unfortunately, however, it's another touch of woo associated with the new administration. Even though I don't think it means much, chiropractors seem to be interpreting it as a nod of support:

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Brain death and fundamentalist religion, revisited

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 15:28:14 -0500

Yesterday, I wrote about the sad case of Motl Brody, a 12-year-old Orthodox Jew whose brain tumor had rendered him brain dead and whose parents are fighting the efforts of the hospital to disconnect him from the ventilator and to stop all the powerful cardiac drugs that are keeping his heart beating and his blood pressure high enough because their religion tells them that death is defined by cessation of heartbeat and breathing. They do not accept the concept of brain death, even though they do accept that their child will never recover.

Yale neurologist and all-around skeptical guru Steve Novella has weighed in. Definitely worth a read.

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The (not-so-)Beautiful (un)Truth: The "alternative" medicine movement gets an Expelled! to call its very own

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 09:00:00 -0500

The things I do for my readers.

I'm referring to a movie entitled The Beautiful Truth, links to whose website and trailers several of you have e-mailed to me over the last couple of weeks. Maybe it's because the movie is only showing in New York and Los Angeles and hasn't made it out of the media enclaves of those cities out to the rest of us in flyover country, or maybe its release is so limited that I just hadn't heard of it. Certainly that appears to be the case, as the schedule shown at the website lists it as beginning an engagement in New York tomorrow and running through November 20 at the Quad Cinema on 13th Street and in Los Angeles in from November 26 to December 4. What this movie reminds me of, more than anything else, is Ben Stein's pseudoscience- and lie-filled bit of "intelligent design" creationism propaganda, Expelled!

It does have a rather slick website, however, not to mention a lot of trailers and clips from the movie.

These trailers and clips make it quite obvious that The Beautiful Truth is nothing less than a paean to cancer quackery in much the same way that Expelled! was a paean to "intelligent design" creationism. Specifically, it's a paean to the quackery known as the Gerson therapy, mixed in with a veritable cornucopia of woo. If the dozen or so clips on the website and YouTube are any indication, this movie is nothing less than a tour into the dark heart of American quackery led by a credulous guide who has drunk deeply from the Kool Aid on sites like Whale.to, NaturalNews.com, and Mercola.com. Just as Expelled! claims that academics are "suppressing" any criticism of "Darwinism" or research into "intelligent design," The Beautiful Truth postulates a grand suppression of this "alternative" cure for cancer that "they" don't want you to know about. The movie is described thusly:

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