oracknows | May 23, 2007Well, well, well.
Remember about a year ago, when Libertarian wingnut Vox Day shot himself in the foot big time by using a warped logic to argue that because it was "possible" for Hitler to round up six million Jews in four years then it's not "impossible" for us to round up 12 million illegal immigrants, a contention that I had a great deal of fun royally fisking (as did Sergey over at Holocaust Controversies) and that was so bad that it was apparently deemed too offensive even for WorldNet Daily, which edited it to water down Vox's horrible historical analogy? (If not, please check out my…
oracknows | May 22, 2007A fellow ScienceBlogger has suffered a profound loss. Sadly, on Sunday, my blogchild Mark lost his father.
If you like Mark's blog (or even if you don't), please do me a favor and take a moment to read Mark's tribute to his father and offer your condolences. He has mine.
oracknows | May 22, 2007The other day, I wrote about how the only use of homeopathy that makes sense is its use by a fictional character, namely Doctor Strange, The Sorcerer Supreme. Now, I have been fortunate enough to have been granted a sign that the homeopathic enchantment works! Woe be unto you skeptics!
Behold, a vision of the Eye of Agamatto on a pancake!
For those of you unaware of what the Eye of Agamatto is, it's the mystic amulet that is Dr. Strange's most powerful occult object. The eye contained within the amulet can, at Strange's command, radiate brilliant light that allows him to see through all…
oracknows | May 22, 2007While I'm on the topic of alternative medicine and NCCAM again, I've said on many occasions that I reject the distinction between evidence-based medicine and "alternative medicine" as a false dichotomy. To me, the only dichotomy that matters is between medicine that has high quality scientific evidence showing that it works and medicine that does not, a category that includes plausible treatments that might work but have not yet been shown to work and treatments, implausible treatments with little or no evidence of efficacy (a category that includes the vast majority of what is lumped…
oracknows | May 22, 2007I've complained on multiple occasions about the infiltration of non-evidence-based "medicine" (a.k.a. woo) into every level of medicine in the U.S.. Worst of all, it's infiltrating medical education in a big way, starting with the pro-woo activism of the American Medical Student Association (AMSA), to various educational programs in various medical schools, to even the mandatory medical curriculum in at least one prestigious medical school. This is more than just teaching what various "alternative medical" therapies are, so that new physicians know what their patients are referring to or…
oracknows | May 21, 2007I would be remiss if I didn't mention that I recently noticed that one of my favorite medical bloggers, Flea, had completely deleted his blog. There's nothing there. It's gone, except for a blank Blogger blog. Apparently, too, Flea's not alone, as Kevin, MD points out.
I'm going to miss Flea, but I understand why he might have done it. As he had documented in the weeks leading up to the disappearance of his blog, he was being sued for malpractice. Indeed, I was amazed at how honest he had been about some of the pretrial preparations he was undergoing. It was great reading, but probably ill-…
oracknows | May 21, 2007I hadn't planned on revisiting this topic again quite so soon, but sometimes a piece of information comes up that's so disturbing that I can't ignore it and can't justify delaying blogging about it by very long. So it is yet again with the strange and disturbing saga of dichloroacetate (DCA), the small molecular chemotherapeutic drug with a novel and scientifically interesting mechanism of action that could lead to a whole new class of chemotherapeutic agents and that has shown considerable promise in rat tumor models but has not yet been tested in humans. Not to belabor the story, which has…
oracknows | May 20, 2007Time passes. What once was new is old, and what once seemed far in the future is now just around the corner.
In other words, the Skeptics' Circle is rapidly approaching again; it's a mere four days away!
This time around, the 61st Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle is scheduled to be hosted by Rebecca at Memoirs of a Skepchick on Thursday, May 24. No more procrastinating! Time flies too fast for that, and, if you're not careful, you'll wake Thursday morning to realize that you missed the Wednesday deadline and didn't get your best skeptical blogging submitted to Rebecca for inclusion in this…
oracknows | May 20, 2007It would appear that I must respectfully disagree (or be Respectfully Insolent, if you will) with fellow comic fan Scott over at Polite Dissent.
Two of my all-time favorite comics are Fantastic Four and (believe it or not, given my present day disdain for woo) Doctor Strange. Doctor Stephen Strange, for those of you not familiar with him, started out as an incredibly arrogant and greedy neurosurgeon who was involved in an auto accident in which he suffered nerve damage to his hands that impaired the fine motor control to the point where, while he could function normally in every day life, he…
oracknows | May 19, 2007Abel Pharmboy shows why I shouldn't have left my American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) proceedings abstract sit on my desk unread for a week.
Damn. Talk about blowing an opportunity. Of course, given that I don't own any pharmaceutical stocks (making me a rather poor "tool of big pharma" indeed), it doesn't matter.
oracknows | May 19, 2007Let's face it. By their very belief in Holocaust denial, Holocaust deniers demonstrate day in and day out that they aren't the sharpest knives in the drawer (or the brightest bulbs on the Christmas tree, pick your simile). However, occasionally, I come across Holocaust denial that brings stupid to a whole new level, and I was made aware of a couple of such examples last week. Naturally, I could not resist sharing them with you, my readers.
First, Larry Fafarman makes his case for the prize of Stupidest Holocaust Denier Statement, with such gems (excerpted from his "article") as:
"Who in the…
oracknows | May 19, 2007A few days ago, I posted a note of congratulations to Gregory Simonian, a 10th grader at the Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies, for winning the Alliance For Science essay contest, for which the topic was Why would I want my doctor to have studied evolution? At the time, the winners had been announced, though, the actual essays hadn't been published yet.
Now they are.
Head on over to the Alliance for Science website and read Greg's essay and the other three winning essays; they're each only two or three pages long, and it'll be well worth your time. (I'm only disappointed that none of…
oracknows | May 18, 2007If you're ever in Iran, you'd better be really, really careful about imbibing a little beer:
Norwegian-Iranian Mamand Mamandy had a brutal meeting with police after drinking two beers while on holiday in Iran.
"It's getting better now, but I am still in great pain," Mamandy, 35, told Aftenposten.no. "My brother is a doctor, and treated me after the whipping. I was in great pain and could not sleep."
Mamandy, a Kurd, explained that he was visiting his mother in Baneh, Iran in April when he was arrested by police.
"We were on an outing with family and friends, six or seven in the evening, and…
oracknows | May 18, 2007I want to apologize to Abel Pharmboy in advance on this one. This is the second time in less than three months that I've invaded his territory to a certain extent in Your Friday Dose of Woo, specifically his The Friday Fermentable feature. Last time around, I couldn't believe it when I encountered some serious farm woo particularly common in wineries known as biodynamics, which involved burying various animal parts (among other things) on the farm in order to promote its life force. Who said that the best woo is found only in medicine?
Certainly not me. At least, not anymore.
This time around…
oracknows | May 17, 2007Dr. R. W. asks (and answers) the question, pointing out in detail how:
Promoters of unscientific claims often reject ordinary scientific standards for experimental design and evidence.
Even government funded CAM research is troubled with serious methodologic flaws.
Research on complementary and alternative methods is conducted without regard to biologic plausibility.
The proponents and funders of alternative medicine research do not accept negative results.
Government oversight is biased in favor of complementary and alternative medicine.
He's right on all points, although he forgot that…
oracknows | May 17, 2007
When I learned of this, I had been highly tempted trot out everybody's favorite undead Führer for a little fun with the Church of Scientology's latest antics. Indeed, when you find out what I'm about to discuss, you'll see why it was a candidate for the loving chomp of his rotting jaws. Heck, I even started to do the whole Hitler zombie schtick that regular readers all know and some even love (or at least tolerate--well, most of you, anyway). As I typed away, though, I was having more and more trouble. My conscience was feeling more and more troubled. After all, I've lovingly crafted…
oracknows | May 16, 2007As a fan of Iggy Pop, I was appalled to read this:
Former "The Lord of the Rings" star Elijah Wood will play Iggy Pop in The Passenger, a biopic of the legendary rocker, reports Variety. Ted Hope's This Is That Productions and Traction Media are executive producing.
The movie, which follows Pop's early years with his band the Stooges, will be directed by Nick Gomez (Drowning Mona) from a script by Eric Schmid.
The $6 million-$8 million "Passenger" is set to film in next six months and is scheduled for delivery by midsummer 2008.
Pop has "given his blessing" to the project but will not take…
oracknows | May 16, 2007Here are a few typical eugenicist quotes from early last century:
"It is an excellent plan to keep defective people in institutions for here they are not permitted to marry and bear children."
"[Scientists who are working at the task of improving the human race] would like to increase the birth rate of families having good heredity, while those people having poor heredity should not marry at all."
"At the present time there are in the United States more than a million people with serious hereditary defects, and to reduce their numbers by even a few thousand would reduce the amount of…