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"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.
Category: Medicine
There are times when I want to fall down on my knees and give thanks for certain cranks. I mean, where would my blogging material come from, were it not for antivaccine loons, quacks, cranks, creationists, and animal rights terrorists...
Posted by Orac at 3:00 AM • 130 Comments •
Category: Medicine
Way back in the day, when I first encountered antivaccine views in that wretched Usenet swamp of pseudoscience, antiscience, and quackery known as misc.health.alternative, there was one particular antivaccine lie that disturbed me more than just about any other. No,...
Posted by Orac at 3:00 AM • 95 Comments •
Category: Medicine
Since I wrote about a man who is arguably the biggest seller of quackery on the Internet, namely Joe Mercola, yesterday, I thought I'd turn my attention to someone who is arguably another of the biggest promoters of quackery on...
Posted by Orac at 9:00 AM • 71 Comments •
Category: Medicine
Here's a rare bit of good news on the regulatory front. It turns out that Representative Dan Burton (R-IN) has finally decided to retire: So Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.) is finally retiring, after two decades in Congress. He's got a...
Posted by Orac at 12:00 AM • 38 Comments •
Category: Medicine
One of the most common retorts that antivaccine activists like to make, usually in the most wounded, self-righteous tone with the most wounded, disgusted expression on their faces that they can manage, is that they are "not antivaccine but rather...
Posted by Orac at 3:09 AM • 415 Comments •
Category: Medicine
In the more than a decade since I first discovered, to my shock, that there are actual people out there who not only don't believe that vaccines are safe despite overwhelming evidence that they are but in fact believe that...
Posted by Orac at 6:00 AM • 252 Comments •
Category: Medicine
I've been an observer and student of the antivaccine movement for nearly a decade now, although my intensive education began almost seven years ago, in early 2005, not long after I started blogging. It was then that I first encountered...
Posted by Orac at 3:00 AM • 211 Comments •
Category: Medicine
Every so often, I come across a bit of antivaccine idiocy that's so amazingly idiotic, such a--shall we say?--target-rich environment that it's catnip to a cat. I just can't resist it, even when there are other topics and subjects out...
Posted by Orac at 3:00 AM • 105 Comments •
Category: Medicine
One of my complaints about academic medicine is that, all too often, its practitioners seem unwilling to take risks to combat the misinformation and lies of the antivaccine movement. So kudos are indicated for Dr. Claire McCarthy at Children's Hospital...
Posted by Orac at 9:45 AM • 88 Comments •
Category: Medicine
The other day, I noted a contrast between certain parts of the developed world (namely, Europe) where, thanks to fears of the MMR vaccine stoked by Andrew Wakefield and the credulous and sensationalistic British press, MMR uptake rates have fallen...
Posted by Orac at 10:10 AM • 449 Comments •
PZ Myers 02.04.2012
Orac 02.16.2011
Jason Rosenhouse 02.10.2012
Greg Laden 02.08.2012
ERV 11.26.2011
