oracknows | December 26, 2009...heavy duty firearms?
Somehow, I don't think we're in Hammond, Indiana anymore.
oracknows | December 26, 2009While I'm recovering fro Christmas this weekend and away a good chunk of tomorrow, here's a question to ponder as 2009 draws to its inevitable close. Val Jones has listed what she views to be the top five threats to science-based medicine that dominated 2009 and look likely to continue to threaten science in medicine during 2010. So, to complement my previous question regarding the worst pseudoscience of the decade, I'd point to Val's post on the top five threats to science-based medicine of 2009 and ask: What were the worst threats to science-based medicine, not just of 2009, but of the…
oracknows | December 25, 2009I think that David Bowie and Bing Crosby say it best:
Yeah, I know I've become a heathen, but I still love this song and this particular performance.
oracknows | December 24, 2009It's Christmas, and I hope that those of you who celebrate the day are having a merry one. Personally, I'm taking the day off from any substantive blogging, instead electing to post quickie holiday-themed stuff that amuses me. Still, it might not be so merry if everyone's favorite elf happened to have met the wrong person on his journey through the world:
"You're on the naughty list now, Jack. The naughty list." Heh.
oracknows | December 24, 2009With Santa beginning his journey through the world to deliver presents to all the good boys and girls, someone sent me a profoundly disturbing video:
I knew it! I knew it! Santa gives away things; so he must be a liberal. But if you listen to Jonah Goldberg, Glenn Beck, and Rush Limbaugh, you know that liberals are all fascists at heart. So it only follows that Santa must be a fascist!
It's so obvious!
So is saying Merry Christmas to all also fascist? Who cares? Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
oracknows | December 24, 2009If there's one thing that's irritated the crap out of me ever since I entered the medical field, it's celebrities with more fame than brains or sense touting various health remedies. Of late, three such celebrities have spread more misinformation and quackery than the rest of the second tier combined. Truly, together, they are the Unholy Trinity of Celebrity Quackery.
The first two of them, of course, are that not-so-dynamic duo of anti-vaccine morons, Jenny McCarthy and her much more famous and successful boyfriend Jim Carrey. Having apparently decided that selling "Indigo Child" woo was not…
oracknows | December 23, 2009It's a really tough competition, but if I had to choose the most ridiculous form of quackery out there, I'd have to choose homeopathy. Although it's common for so-called "alternative" medicines to be so utterly implausible from a scientific standpoint that it is not unreasonable, barring very compelling positive evidence, to provisionally reject them as impossible, homeopathy goes one further than most forms of alt-med. In fact, it goes many further than nearly any form of alt-med. First, it combines the principle of "like cures like," a principle based far more on ancient concepts of…
oracknows | December 22, 2009Ha! So true, although in academia we aren't so much concerned with getting products into consumers' hands; so the exact times may be different:
Via xkcd, of course!
oracknows | December 22, 2009(NOTE ADDED 12/7/2010: Kim Tinkham has died of what was almost certainly metastatic breast cancer.)
If there's been one theme running through this blog every since the very beginning, it's the unreliability of testimonials as "evidence" for the success of a cancer treatment. Indeed, if you go back to one of the very first "Orac-length" posts was about that very topic. Indeed, almost exactly five years ago, I analyzed a common type of testimonial for "alternative" cancer therapies and explained why it sounds so convincing to lay people who don't understand cancer biology and treatment. It's a…
oracknows | December 21, 2009It's the end, the end of the '70s
It's the end, the end of the century.
Joey Ramone, 1979
As amazing as it is to me, the first decade of the 21st century is fast approaching its end. It seems like only yesterday that my wife and I were waiting for the dawn of the new millennium with the fear that civilization would go kablooey because of the Y2K bug. (Remember that?) Obviously, civilization didn't end. Given the rise of pseudoscience over the last several years, it only seems that way sometimes. However, even though it's an entirely arbitrary construct and a human imposition of our own wishes…
oracknows | December 20, 2009If there's one thing that irritates me about the anti-vaccine movement, it's the utter disingenuousness of the movement. How often do we hear the claim from anti-vaccine loons that "we're not 'anti-vaccine'; we're 'pro-safe vaccine'"? I've tried to pin such people down time and time again to answer just what it would take in terms of scientific studies and evidence or in terms of what "toxins" would have to be removed to convince them that vaccines are sufficiently safe that they will have their children vaccinated? Inevitably, the answer involves levels of evidence that are beyond what can…
oracknows | December 20, 2009Regular readers here know that I'm a long time Doctor Who fan. That's why it's with some sadness that I await the approach of the two-episode finale for David Tennant's tenure as the Tenth Doctor. Over his three full seasons and multiple specials in 2009, Tennant redefined the role and even began to rival Tom Baker for my favorite Doctor. This time, fortunately, BBC America will be showing these episodes one day after they air in the U.K.; so I don't have to choose between waiting several months to see them or getting them by BitTorrent. In any case, there are some tantalizing clues about…
oracknows | December 19, 2009Not too long ago, I opined about how you can't cure stupid. It turns out that there is no herbal remedy for stupid either:
You will see that this is true. In fact, given the quality of arguments advocates of "natural remedies" use to support their favored woo, I have to wonder if herbs actually make them stupid.
oracknows | December 18, 2009Since I happen to have fallen into the topic of anthropogenic global warming, before I move back to medical topics I might as well have a little fun. Certainly, I could use some, given that I just wrote two posts in which I felt forced to criticize someone whom I admire greatly. Besides, it's been over a week since I last blogged about vaccines on this blog. that has to be some sort of record. Why wreck it now? It feels good to take a break from the topic, and there's always next week. I have no doubt that the anti-vaccine movement will produce something begging for some not-so-Respectful…
oracknows | December 17, 2009Yesterday, I wrote one of my typical Orac-ian length posts that was unusual. What was unusual about it was not its length. Rather, what was unusual about it was the target of its criticism, perhaps one of the last people in the world I would ever have expected to have to have taken issue with, James Randi himself, who had posted a truly embarrassing post in which he cast doubt upon anthropogenic global warming (AGW). What provoked my dismay was not so much that Randi had questioned AGW; what dismayed me so was how he did it. His post, as I pointed out, was chock full of logical fallacies and…
oracknows | December 17, 2009It's that time yet again. The Skeptics' Circle has returned once again to provide a much needed dose of skepticism to the blogosphere. This time around, the 126th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle is being hosted over at World of Weird Things.
Next up will be Life, The Universe, and One Brow, where the Skeptics' Circle will finish out 2009. Submission instructions can be found here. Guidelines can be found here.
oracknows | December 16, 2009Remember how yesterday I said that sometimes writing this blog depresses me? At the time, I made that observation because there are times when the unending constant onslaught of pseudoscience, anti-science, and woo leads me to despair that the human race will ever overcome its cognitive defects. However, there are other times when blogging depresses me. It's for an entirely different reason, though. There are times when people I admire, people who should know better, fall and fall hard. No, I don't mean Tiger Woods getting it on with a bunch of blondes. The level of horniness and lack of…
oracknows | December 16, 2009Last week, I marked the occasion of my fifth anniversary in the blogosphere. Yesterday, my blog bud Abel Pharmboy marked his fourth anniversary in the blogosphere. Anyone who makes it past a year, as far as I'm concerned, has passed the test of time and shown himself (or herself) to be in this crazy thing for the long haul; people who have managed to pump out quality material for four years are exceedingly rare.
Like me, Abel has asked his readers to delurk. However, he has been disappointed by the results. Come on, people! Abel deserves more. If you're one of his readers and see this, do me…
oracknows | December 15, 2009There are times when I get really depressed writing this blog. It's not because I don't enjoy it, although like any long term hobby my blogging does occasionally feel like more of an obligation than a hobby. That's only part of the time, though. Most of the time I really do enjoy what I do. That doesn't mean that it doesn't get to me from time to time, however. After all, how much quackery, pseudoscience, and woo can a plastic box of blinking multicolored lights stand on a daily basis for five years. I would submit to you that Orac is made of quite stern stuff indeed. Still, it's depressing…
oracknows | December 15, 2009It would appear that during my mini-hiatus (indeed, a homeopathic hiatus, so to speak) to celebrate having passed the fifth anniversary of the start of this blog and being irritated by some of my colleagues enough to risk getting myself in a little trouble, I actually missed something that normally I'd leap on like a starving hyena. Normally, such woo would have been like waving the proverbial red cape in front of the bull, holding a slab or bloody red steak in front of a starving pit bull, or a rabbit zipping in front of my late lamented dog. The not-so-Respectful Insolence would have been…