oracknows | October 31, 2009It's almost here, and it's almost time!
The 123rd Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle is fast approaching. This time around it will be here on Thursday, November 5. That means skeptical bloggers out there don't have much time to get their best recent work to Colin at Blue Genes for inclusion.
Guidelines for what we're looking for when it comes to submissions to the Skeptics' Circle can be found here. Instructions for submitting to this week's Skeptics' Circle are here.
Don't let Colin down! Bury him in submissions! (Not literally, of course, which would be hard. How do you bury someone in…
oracknows | October 30, 2009I'd say this is definitely a contender:
ADDENDUM: Sorry, I just assumed everyone knew what these guys are. If you don't, here are a couple of classic Sesame Street videos to demonstrate the Yip Yip Aliens in action:
oracknows | October 30, 2009The little matter of finding out that the actor who played Data on Star Trek: The Next Generation appears to have anti-vaccine proclivities sidetracked me from something that I had actually wanted to blog about yesterday. Specifically, it's something that my blog bud Abel Pharmboy has been hitting hard over the last couple of days. It may also, sadly, because I've become a bit jaded at the nastiness that anti-vaccine groups such as Generation Rescue (i.e., "Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey's Autism Organization"--at least days) and its erstwile founder J.B. Handley can lay down. I'm referring,…
oracknows | October 28, 2009
Unfortunately, Brent Spiner is not living up to Commander Data's portrayal of Sherlock Holmes.
Say it ain't so, Data! Say it ain't so!Last night, I decided for the heck of it to check my Twitter account, something I only tend to do sporadically, although I do keep a constant stream of links to the latest Insolence flowing, to the gratitude and awe of my followers, when I saw this Tweet directed at me from someone with the 'nym Zombie President:
@BrentSpiner I prefer @oracknows over Dr jay gordon any day.
Huh? I wondered what was going on. One thing you should know before I continue is that…
oracknows | October 28, 2009Not long ago, I wrote a post warning about how funding for non-science-based modalities and, indeed, modalities that are purely religion-based, have found their way into various versions of health care reform bills that are currently wending their way through both houses of Congress. In other words, purveyors of faith healing and purely religious woo are trying to do what purveyors of "alternative" medicine have already done through Senator Tom Harkin, and hijack the health care reform process to codify their preferred unscientific health care modalities as legitimate after science has…
oracknows | October 28, 2009Damn you, PZ!
Not only are you muscling into my territory (what, aren't creationism and atheism enough?), but you had to subject me to the most mind-numbing example of why homeopaths are the most clueless purveyors of pseudoscience there are! Behold, Dr. Charlene Werner, an optometrist (apparently) and a homeopath. I warn you, however. If you have any understanding of physics or chemistry whatsoever or if you've ever read (and liked) Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time (or anything else he's ever written), sit down now. Take a deep breath. Heck, crack open a bottle of wine and down at…
oracknows | October 27, 2009
About a month and half ago, we learned that über-quack Hulda Clark, the woman who said that she had the Cure for All Cancers, had died on September 3, 2009. I was criticized for entitling my post Requiem for a Quack, but, given how Clark's quackery had contributed to the suffering and deaths of an unknown number of cancer patients, I didn't really feel too bad about it, although I do realize that the taboo about speaking ill of the recently dead is a strong one.
At the time, I was curious what the cause of Dr. Clark's death was, because it seemed rather mysterious, being described as the…
oracknows | October 26, 2009I was going to join PZ Myers, ERV, and Pamela Ronald in helping out an old blogging friend and former host of the Skeptics' Circle, Karl Mogel of The Inoculated Mind by pimping his other science-based blog Biofortified, which seeks to provide a science- and evidence-based discussion of plant genetics and genetic engineering. Unfortunately, as seems to be the case lately, other things have distracted me, and I'm late to the party. Better late than never, though.
Basically, Biofortified is in the Ashoka Changemakers contest, GMO Risk or Rescue. First prize is a $1500 grant and a conversation…
oracknows | October 26, 2009I really have to apologize to the Young Australian Skeptics. I screwed up. I didn't do my duty as organizer of The Skeptics' Circle. The Aussies provided a bang-up edition of the 122nd Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle, and I didn't even promote it.
So I'm promoting it now. Go. Read. Enjoy.
Then join us back a week from Thursday (i.e., November 5) when Blue Genes will be hosting.
oracknows | October 26, 2009I had meant to address this topic last week, but the whole Suzanne Somers thing bubbled up and overwhelmed my blogging attention. Regular readers of this blog probably realize that I tend to live and die as a blogger by the maxim that if some is good more must be better. So I clobbered the topic with three posts in rapid succession. Now that that's out of the way, I can address topics that readers have been bugging me about sending to me.
At or near the top of the list has to be a biased and poorly framed article that appeared in The Atlantic this month. I tell ya, I've been a subscriber to…
oracknows | October 24, 2009I'd like to thank revere right now publicly. He's taught me a new word:
Methodolatry: The profane worship of the randomized clinical trial as the only valid method of investigation.
Many of my readers have e-mailed me about a recent article in The Atlantic by Shannon Brownlee and Jeanne Lenzer, two reporters whose particular bias is that we as a nation are "over treated." That may be true, although not to the extent that Brownlee, at least, seems to think, and her article on swine flu was truly execrable. Moreover, "methodalatry" perfectly describes one of my complaints about the "evidence-…
oracknows | October 23, 2009Thank you, Mike Adams. You've saved my blogging posterior yet again.
What do I mean? Well, I had originally intended to do a lucid, insightful, penetrating analysis of a scientific study today. However, when I got home last night after a hard day in clinic I was just too tired. So, faced with that, I had a choice: either no bloggy for you tomorrow, or I could take on something that wasn't quite so--shall we say?--demanding, something more in line with what my fragile eggshell mind could deal with after a 12 hour day at work.
Enter woo-meister supreme, Mike Adams. And, boy, is he ticked off.…
oracknows | October 22, 2009Before I move on for a while from the topic of that faded 1970s comic actress, Suzanne Somers, whose latest book is a paean to cancer quackery and who has been carpetbombing the airwaves with burning napalm stupid, I think one revelation is worth a brief mention. Specifically, after my post about how I find Somers' story about being misdiagnosed with cancer, a fan wrote:
Orac,
Sarcoidosis? Nope. Wrong again. Suzanne admitted on TV she had an acute pulmonary fungal infection, valley fever. Try going back to medical school, you mental midget.
I do so love the adoration of my fans. However, it…
oracknows | October 22, 2009I hadn't planned on writing about Suzanne Somers again so soon. After all, I haven't yet received the promotional copy of her book (Knockout: Interviews with Doctors Who Are Curing Cancer--And How to Prevent Getting It in the First Place) that a most generous reader has sent to me, and I didn't think I'd have a chance until a few days after the book arrived. However, something's been bothering me since yesterday's post, and it's bothering me enough that I think it deserves a followup post of its own. I alluded to it briefly during part of my post, but I really think it's something to be…
oracknows | October 22, 2009Apparently, some of my readers in Canada are getting this when they look at any of my Suzanne Somers posts:
No other country seems to be affected; at least, no readers from other countries have reported the problem to me.
This will not do. The Overlords have been informed. In the meantime, if you are in Canada, I apologize. Ads for such rank quackery and misinformation have no more place on ScienceBlogs than the creationist ads that popped up a while ago. Fortunately, from my locale, I have not been able to replicate the problem. However, if you are in a country other than Canada and see…
oracknows | October 21, 2009There are two times a year that seem to be a time to beware of a serious assault of pseudoscience and quackery. The first time of year is in April, which is Autism Awareness Month. Over the last few years I can be just as sure as night following day, only to be followed by day again, that the anti-vaccine movement will use the occasion of Autism Awareness month to hit the airwaves with a blistering barrage of brain-dead buffoonery about vaccines and autism. This year, it consisted of Jenny McCarthy hitting Larry King Live with her equally brain dead boyfriend Jim Carrey, as well as Generation…
oracknows | October 20, 2009Somehow I missed this when it first aired last week, but...take that, Bill Maher:
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart
Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Doubt Break '09
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes
Political Humor
Ron Paul Interview
oracknows | October 20, 2009...be sure to check out Dr. John Snyder's article on vaccines on the official blog of the NYC Skeptics. As a pediatrician practicing in areas with high levels of resistance to vaccines, he's on the front lines.
oracknows | October 19, 2009Many have been the times over the last five years that I've called out bad journalism about medicine in general and vaccines in particular, especially the coverage of the discredited notion that vaccines or mercury in vaccines somehow was responsible for the "autism epidemic." That's why I feel a special responsibility to highlight good reporting on the issue. Indeed, reporting on this issue is so uniformly awful that when I see something this good, I want to do everything in my power to hawk the hell out of it. So, I want you to read this article in the November issue of WIRED Magazine…
oracknows | October 19, 2009
I don't know how many of you have ever been to an Ikea, one the Swedish furniture stores that have sprouted across the U.S. over the last couple of decades, bringing Swedish design sensibility and off sized sheets to the the masses at affordable prices; that is, if you can stand the crowds. Apparently Jesus likes Ikea, too, as he has shown his holy visage at Ikea's Braehead outlet, near Glasgow. More specifically, Jesus has shown up on the door to the men's bathroom at that particular store. This provoked one of the best lines I've ever heard about a pareidolia experience:
Last night one…