oracknows | September 13, 2010Regarding this whole skeptic thing, if there's one thing I've learned about pseudoscience and bizarre, unscientific beliefs, it's that, just when I think I've seen it all, the world slaps me in the face (facepalm, to be precise) to show me that I haven't seen it all after all. Such was what happened when a truly bizarre conference started popping up around the skeptical blogosphere at blogs like Pharyngula, Unreasonable Faith, and Starts With A Bang. If you think that one thing that kooks can't deny is that the earth revolves around the sun, you'd be wrong. Witness the Galileo Was Wrong…
oracknows | September 12, 2010THE PAST IS PROLOGUE
Location: Central New Jersey, deep within the brick and steel of a secret pharma base.
Year: 1999.
A shadowy figure dressed in gray, bald, and stroking a white cat enters a nondescript room in the middle of which sits a massive conference table. More than a dozen men and women leap to their feet at attention and wait until the man pauses at the head of the table and then very deliberately sits in high-backed leather chair.
Shadowy figure: Have they arrived?
Lackey #1: Yes, Leader.
Shadowy figure: Let them wait a few minutes. First, we have pressing business. You have…
oracknows | September 12, 2010Fresh from the comments last night:
I just want to say that JM nor Wakefield had anything to do with my decision not to vax. My doc in fact doesn't recommend it. I have plenty of studies from CDC's site that did the convincing for me. Maybe ya'll should read it too, you may be surprised at what you actually find. I'd love to see the groups seperate if that's what it has to come down to. If you vaxed folks start saying things like "Ew you're not vaccinated, gross." Then hey- you and your toxic children-- who are shedding the viruses and causing new outbreaks--can go and live together in a…
oracknows | September 11, 2010Once again we come to another September 11. It's hard to believe that it's been nine years since that horrible day. On this day, I generally don't do any new posts. Also, traditionally I do two things. First, I post the following video.
This video was shot by Bob and Bri, who in 2001 lived in a high rise a mere 500 yards from the North Tower. On this eighth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, I think it's important to post this again. It is the most prolonged and continuous video of the attack that I have seen, and, as such, It is difficult to watch.
That's why it's so important to…
oracknows | September 10, 2010I hate to do this to Bora again. I really do. I'm also getting tired of blogging all these crappy acupuncture studies. I really am. However, sometimes a skeptic's gotta do what a skeptic's gotta do, and this is one of those times.
As you may recall, a mere week ago I was disturbed to have discovered the publication of a truly horrifically bad acupuncture study in PLoS ONE. It had all the hallmarks of quackademic medicine: an implausible hypothesis, trying to correlate mystical concepts of meridians and qi to anatomy and failing miserably, and dubious statistical modeling. That PLoS ONE…
oracknows | September 9, 2010It's been a while since we've heard from CBS News' resident anti-vaccine propagandist Sharyl Attkisson. When last we saw her, she was sucking up to the man whose discredited pseudoscience started the modern anti-vaccine movement, Andrew Wakefield, a man who went on to have his medical license ignominiously taken away. Prior to that, she had tried to out-crank the mercury militia's most famous anti-vaccine kook, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.; laid down some seriously incompetent and biased "journalism" promoting the myth that vaccines cause autism; and may even have been feeding information to…
oracknows | September 9, 2010Here and elsewhere in the blogosphere, over the last several years, what started out as a more general interest in skepticism and science with a natural focus on medicine and a side interest in combatting Holocaust denial became more focused on promoting science-based medicine. As the saying goes, "Science, it works, bitches," and I make no apologies for promoting science-based medicine as the best medicine and applying skepticism and science to claims of purveyors of unscientific so-called "alternative" medicine advocates and anti-vaccine loons. However, I am not blind to the shortcomings of…
oracknows | September 8, 2010I must admit that, after having taken it easy over the last few days, when the time came to sit down and get back into the swing of things, I had a bit of a hard time. No, it's not just blogging. That's actually a rather minor component of the whole malaise that descended upon me like a shroud. Rather, it's the simple fact that the Labor Day weekend in the U.S. represents the unofficial end of the summer season. After that, it's all back to school, back to work, back to the grind.
Back to real life after summer.
This reluctance, not surprisingly, seeped out of real life and started to permeat…
oracknows | September 7, 2010After chilling out for part of the weekend, yesterday I became so engrossed in writing my part of a training grant for my postdoc that, before I knew it, it was way too late to provide you with the Insolence you crave for today. Oh, well. Tomorrow for sure; there's a lot that has been waiting for my attention. Besides, I haven't even really taken a vacation this summer; so I deserve a day or two (or three) off from time to time. In the meantime, I'll post a couple of bits of "classic" (if you can call it that) Insolence. This particular bit of insolence dates back nearly four years, all the…
oracknows | September 6, 2010After chilling out for part of the weekend, yesterday I became so engrossed in writing my part of a training grant for my postdoc that, before I knew it, it was way too late to provide you with the Insolence you crave. Oh, well. Tomorrow for sure. In the meantime, I'll post a couple of bits of "classic" (if you can call it that) Insolence. This particular bit of insolence dates back nearly four years, all the way back to November 2006. Remember, if you haven't been reading at least four years, it's new to you! Besides, it's always fun (or disturbing) to me to see how well some of my older…
oracknows | September 5, 2010In case you hadn't guessed, because of the holiday weekend, blogging's been rather slow. This is in general a good thing, a chance to rest and rethink, but occasionally, even while chilling out, I see things that I can't resist mentioning briefly. Things like this.
If there's one thing about "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) that has always puzzled me, it's that, at least here in the "West," there seems to be an inordinate fascination with ancient "Eastern" medical systems. These include, of course, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and Indian Ayruvedic medicine, both of which…
oracknows | September 3, 2010One of the most frustrating aspects of taking care of cancer patients is that in general, with a handful of specific exceptions, we do not have good curative therapies for patients with stage IV cancer, particularly solid tumors. Consequently, we are forced to view patients with stage IV cancer as "incurable" because, the vast majority of the time, they are incurable. Over the years, we have thrown everything but the kitchen sink at patients with stage IV disease, largely with dissapointing results. That's not to say that the few specific exceptions to which I alluded are not a reason for…
oracknows | September 2, 2010Nearly a month ago, I expressed my dismay and displeasure at the infiltration fo quackademic medicine into what is arguably the premier medical journal in the world, The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) in the form of a highly credulous review on the use of acupuncture for low back pain that brought eternal shame on the hallowed pages of a once-great journal. As Mark Crislip put it, trust, once damaged or lost, is very hard to restore, and I definitely lost a lot of trust for the NEJM compared to what I had for it a month ago. Since then, I've been keeping my eyes out for other examples…
oracknows | September 1, 2010The comment thread for my post last week about how philosophical vaccine exemptions in California are endangering herd immunity is rapidly approaching 500 comments as I write this and may well surpass that number by the time this post "goes live" in the morning. I mention this because buried in the comment thread are a number of comments by our old "friend," that anti-vaccine-sympathetic pediatrician to the stars, Dr. Jay Gordon doing what Dr. Jay does best and basically making a fool of himself on matters of vaccine science through his preference for anecdote over sound epidemiology and…
oracknows | August 31, 2010I love it when my fans notice me.
After all, of what use is my having taken so many hours over so many years laying down on a nearly daily basis if my words don't have an impact? Surely I couldn't be so egotistical that I'd do it anyway even if my readership was what it was when I first started out and had not increased to the point where I'm the (alleged) force that I've become in the medical and skeptical blogosphere, would I?
Wait, on second thought, don't answer that.
In any case, back in the day I'd write my best snarky skeptical deconstruction of some bit of pseudoscience or another and…
oracknows | August 30, 2010A frequent lament of members of the anti-vaccine movement is that they are not "anti-vaccine" but rather "pro-safe vaccine." they like to claim that they are not opposed to vaccines in general. Of course, in many, if not most or even all cases, that denial is either a lie or self-delusion. After all, even the most die-hard anti-vaccine zealot realizes that being anti-vaccine is quite correctly viewed by the vast majority of people as not rational.
That's why, in a perverse way, I'm thankful for loons like Mike Adams. Yes, Mike Adams. He lays the crazy out in a way that no one else does. But…
oracknows | August 29, 2010A friend of mine sent me a link to one of my hometown news stations because he saw something that irritated him. On the front page, there is a poll of such epic burning stupid that it requires an immediate crash. I may not be P.Z., but I have in some instances overcome my previous dislike of poll crashing, especially when it's a poll this stupid:
Do you think immunizations are safe?
Yes
No
As if an Internet poll has any bearing whatsoever on whether vaccines are safe or even on whether people believe vaccines are safe.
The poll is located on the webpage of the Detroit FOX affiliate in the…
oracknows | August 29, 2010Yesterday, I expressed my displeasure over a truly idiotic press release by the Center for Inquiry over the "Ground Zero mosque" entitled The Center for Inquiry Urges That Ground Zero Be Kept Religion-Free. I happen to know that a lot of supporters of CFI were very unhappy about the press release as well, because apparently the president of CFI, Ron Lindsay, is feeling the heat. Because I wrote to him complaining, I received the following mass response:
Thank you for providing us with your comments concerning the recent press release issued by the Center for Inquiry on the Ground Zero…
The Center For Inquiry on the "Ground Zero mosque": Incompetent satire or abandonment of principles?
oracknows | August 28, 2010I hadn't planned on blogging at all today, much about on this particular topic. As some of you may have noticed, I'm trying to cut back on the blog habit, particularly on the weekends. Gone are the days when I'd foolishly try to emulate P.Z. Myers and have several posts up in a day; lately most days there is only one post up. Moreover, over the years, I've drifted away from writing about religion, except when it explicitly intersects with science, in particular medical science. In fact, the whole creationism/evolution kerfuffle, which I used to write about quite frequently, has become an…
oracknows | August 27, 2010Having followed the anti-vaccine movement continuously for nearly six years now, I had come to think that I had seen it all as far as deceptive strategies for frightening parents about vaccines. Obviously, becoming too complacent is foolish, because, as misguided and scientifically ignorant as they are, many of the leaders of the anti-vaccine movement (Jenny McCarthy excepted) are not stupid. In fact, some of them are damned clever; otherwise, they wouldn't be so successful at demonizing vaccines and promoting the scientifically discredited myth that vaccines cause autism. Every so often, the…