oracknows | March 30, 2010I hate to write about that woo-meister supreme Mike Adams more than one time in a week. For one thing, his website, NaturalNews.com, is a font of pseudoscience and quackery rivaling the infamous Whale.to, which makes it powerfully seductive to go back to that well again and again for blogging material. Although taking on an Adams screed is almost always a lot of fun for me, it's also too easy. Mike's craziness is so strong that, while it almost guarantees an entertaining piece for my blog, going back to that well too often risks making me fat and lazy as a skeptic and potentially boring you.…
oracknows | March 29, 2010If there's one thing about the anti-vaccine movement I've learned over the last five or so years, it's that it's virtually completely immune to evidence, science, and reason. No matter how much evidence is arrayed against it, it always finds a way to spin, distort, or misrepresent it to combat the evidence. Not that this is any news to readers of this blog or other skeptical blogs that make combatting anti-vaccine propaganda one of its major themes, but it bears repeating often. It also bears repeating and emphasizing examples of just the sort of disingenuous and even outright deceptive…
oracknows | March 27, 2010As far as silly Internet memes go, given my interest in World War II history, I have a weakness for Downfall parodies, which have grown up on YouTube like kudzu over the last couple of years. I also thought it was only a matter of time before someone did something like this and wondered why it hadn't been done before:
(Note: In case you don't know or remember who Poul Thorsen is, read this.)
I love it:
"Perhaps that 14 Studies website was too high brow." Heh.
"Now I'll have to pay for another stupid telephone survey." Heh heh.
"But what's the use? Orac will only make fun of me." Heh heh heh…
oracknows | March 27, 2010Perhaps you've seen them. (Actually, how could you avoid them?) I'm talking about those annoying Omnaris commercials with the crappy computer animation in which a bunch of military-looking men in helmets ram an Omnaris sprayer into the woman's nose to fix her nasal allergies:
Something's always bugged me about that commercial, more than the amateurish computer animation and the cheesy, "Omnaris, to the nose!" battle cry of the mini-white troops. Yes, I see the obvious (and lame) homage to Woody Allen's Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask). Even so,…
oracknows | March 26, 2010I have an MD and a PhD. While many people find that to be impressive, personally I've become so inured of it that I certainly don't take note of it much anymore. Certainly, I rarely point it out. So, you may ask, why am I pointing it out this time, even going so far as to start a post with it? The answer is simple. If there was one thing I always thought about having both an MD and a PhD, it's that it should render one more resistant to pseudoscience and woo. I know, I know, maybe I'm being incredibly arrogant or incredibly naive--possibly both--but it was what I thought for a long time, even…
oracknows | March 25, 2010Here's one we've been waiting for. It's that time again, time for another meeting of The Skeptics' Circle. This time around, the host is everyone's favorite purveyor of rhyming skepticism, Digital Cuttlefish, hosting the 133rd Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle.
Go, read, enjoy.
Next up to host on April 8 will be Divisible by Pi. The Digital Cuttlefish is a tough act to follow, but I bet Richard can do it.
oracknows | March 25, 2010I've said it before, and I'll say it again. I'm not really a political blogger. True, I do from time to time succumb to the blogger's temptation of being a pundit on current events or pontificating on politics, but in general I don't do that very often because political bloggers are a dime a dozen and politics isn't my area of strength. Writing about science and science-based medicine is. That's part of the reason why I really haven't said much about the massive health care reform bill that was passed on Sunday or the political process, except when on occasion the utter insanity of it all (…
oracknows | March 24, 2010I have a new favorite word.
Yesterday, in the comments after my post on cranks attacking the concept of a scientific consensus, a reader named Craig wrote:
We don't talk about consensus on these issues today merely because the consensus is so strong that only a dedicated guanophrenic would ever question them.
"Guanophrenic"? I love that word. It has the prefect combination of meaning, in essence, "shithead," while having a delightfully clever implication of bats as in "batshit insane." Of course, being a physician, I'd probably prefer the term "guanocephalic" proposed later in the comment…
oracknows | March 24, 2010It has often been written on this blog and elsewhere that the mark of a true crank is hatred of the scientific consensus, be it consensus regarding the theory of evolution, the science that says homeopathy is impossible, anthropogenic global warming; various areas of science-based medicine; or the safety and efficacy of vaccines. Perhaps the most famous expression of distrust of a scientific consensus is the famous speech by Michael Crichton, in which he famously said:
Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science…
oracknows | March 23, 2010Every so often, real life intrudes on blogging. This is one of those times. So enjoy this bit of Classic Insolence from back in April 2007 and be assured that I'll be back tomorrow. Remember, if you've been reading less than three years, it's new to you, and, even if you have been reading more than three years, it's fun to see how posts like this have aged.
From fellow ScienceBlogger Abel, I'm made aware of an excellent post on the Health Care Renewal Blog about the financial reality of being an academic physician in a modern U.S. medical school. It's an excellent overview of how medical…
oracknows | March 22, 2010Every so often, real life intrudes on blogging, preventing the creation of fresh Insolence, at least Insolence of the quality that you've come to expect. This is one of those times. So enjoy this bit of Classic Insolence from back in November 2007 and be assured that I'll be back tomorrow. Remember, if you've been reading less than two and a half years, it's new to you, and, even if you have been reading more than two and a half years, it's fun to see how posts like this have aged.
I wish I had thought of this one, but I didn't. However, I never let a little thing like not having thought of…
oracknows | March 22, 2010Here we go again.
Every so often, it seems, the media has to recycle certain scare stories based on little or no science. Be it vaccines and whether they cause autism or not (the don't) or various environmental exposures supposedly linked to various cancers or other diseases in which the science is far more complex or tentative than represented, convincing people that some common thing to which we are routinely exposed is going to kill them seldom fails to bring in the readers. One of the favorite targets of this is the ubiquitous cell phone, and there have been two hunks o' burnin' stupid…
oracknows | March 21, 2010With all the problems Toyota's had lately, I have to wonder if some day when I get behind the wheel of my car I might have a ride like this.
Yeah, it's not original, but it amused me nonetheless, and I'm too tired to write anything substantive this weekend. But Monday's coming just as fast as any ride in a Toyota, as will that insolence my readers have come to know and love (or hate).
oracknows | March 19, 2010I'm envious of Steve Novella.
No, the reason isn't his vastly greater influence in the skeptical community than mine, his podcast The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, or the fact that he gets called a lot more for commentary when something involving quackery versus science-based medicine comes up. He's earned that, having been at this a lot longer than me and under his own name. No, what irritates me is that he somehow manages to get homeopaths to make videos like this trashing him:
"Homeopathy: The persecuted Jew of modern Nazi fascist medicine"? Isn't "Nazi fascist" a bit redundant? Maybe…
oracknows | March 19, 2010Remember how I had a little fun with Katie Wright's overheated rhetoric about Kathleen Sebelius' request to the press that they not give equal weight to anti-vaccine cranks when they report about issues of vaccines? Her exact words, if you will recall, were:
There are groups out there that insist that vaccines are responsible for a variety of problems, despite all scientific evidence to the contrary. We (the office of Secretary of Health and Human Services) have reached out to media outlets to try to get them not to give the views of these people equal weight in their reporting.
Nothing…
oracknows | March 18, 2010It's been a while since I wrote about this topic, but I fear for the future of medicine.
Regular readers know what I'm talking about. The infiltration of various unscientific, pseudoscientific, and even anti-scientific "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) modalities into academic medicine seems increasingly to be endangering science-based medicine. Worse, this infiltration of quackery seems at least as bad, if not worse, in academic medicine, so much so that Dr. R.W. coined a most exquisite term for the increasing prevalence of pseudoscience in medical academia: Quackademic medicine…
oracknows | March 17, 2010Given the resurgence of the mercury militia over the last week or so in response to the Poul Thorsen case, I was amused to have found what looks to me to be the cure for autism.
The cure?
Well, if you're a member of the mercury militia and believe that thimerosal-containing vaccines cause autism, isn't the cure obvious? Come on! Think! You must know. Here's a hint: Similia similibus curentur.
That's right. We're talking a 30C dilution of homeopathic thimerosal, baby! Why didn't anyone think of it before?
Hey, given the vast amount of data refuting the idea that thimerosal in vaccines causes…
oracknows | March 17, 2010Kent Heckenlively shows us why AoA is "not anti-vaccine":
Bruesewitz v. Wyeth has the potential to move all that in a new direction. The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act simply states, "No vaccine manufacturer shall be liable . . . if the injury or death resulted from side-effect that were unavoidable even though the vaccine was properly prepared and was accompanied by proper directions and warnings."
What does that mean in plain English? The example I've always heard used in reference to such a standard is dynamite. Now we all know what dynamite does. It blows up. So, if you light…
oracknows | March 17, 2010
It's rare that I encounter a bit of nonsense that allows me to deploy two of my favorite rhetorical devices. First, it lets me pull out one of my favorite clips from one of my favorite movies, in which the immortal line, "Help! Help! I'm being repressed!" was first uttered. Second, it lets me repeat once again yet another variation of Inigo Montoya's immortal words. It's a two-fer! Not surprisingly, it's courtesy of the anti-vaccine crank blog we've all come to know and love (well, I love it because it has provided me such a target-rich environment for taking on quackery and woo, although I…