oracknows | October 7, 2009As you may have noticed, I've fallen into a groove (or, depending on your point of view, a rut) writing about anti-vaccine lunacy. The reason is simple. While I was busy going nuts over Bill Maher's receiving the Richard Dawkins Award, the anti-vaccine movement has been busy, and there are some things I need to address that had backed up while I was distracted. There's one more thing I need to address before I move on to other topics.
Over the last couple of months, I've noticed something about the anti-vaccine movement. Specifically, I've noticed that the mavens of pseudoscience that make up…
oracknows | October 6, 2009Alright, I think I got the whole Maher/Dawkins thing out of my system for now. True, given the highly annoying reaction of one reader, I was half-tempted to write yet another post on the whole fiasco just out of spite, but I decided that spite in and of itself was not a good reason to write a blog post. Well, in this case it isn't, anyway, but if it were someone like Vox Day, or J.B. Handley, or a hapless quack or creationist, well, a wee bit of spite can make for some mighty fine blogging that's really fun to write. True, spite should never be the be-all and end-all of a blog, but certainly…
oracknows | October 5, 2009...and, no, I don't mean Orac, his last few posts notwithstanding.
No, don't worry, this post is most definitely not about Bill Maher. Rather, it's how, while doing searches for that craziness, I found even more disturbing craziness. Even though I was disappointed in him on this one issue and even though I often don't agree with him on religion, never let it be said that I don't still have considerable admiration for Richard Dawkins. That's why, when I came across some truly over-the-top attacks on Dawkins, I thought it would be worthwhile to mention them, as a little wafer to cleanse the…
oracknows | October 4, 2009My first hometown, as many readers of this blog know, is Detroit, where I spent the first ten years or so of my life. My second hometown, as I pointed out a while back when a particularly loony city council candidate caught the eye of the skeptical blogosphere.
Unfortunately, I just found out that there's some more looniness going on there in a little more than a week. My cousin e-mailed me this notice:
Event: Mrs. Michigan Autism Lecture
Date: Thursday, October 15, 2009
Time: 6:30pm Location: Zerbo's Health Foods
Event Details:
Heidi Scheer is a national spokesperson for Autism Awareness…
oracknows | October 4, 2009I hadn't planned on writing much, if anything more, about the whole Bill Maher debacle, but PZ has shown up in my comments and graciously tried to explain what's going on at the AAI convention regarding the truly awful choice of Bill Maher for the Richard Dawkins Award:
Look, I don't know what else I can say. I didn't endorse Maher; if they'd run this decision by me months ago, I would have said, "Are you nuts?". But of course, I have no clout with the AAI. Dawkins consented to the award initially, because he didn't know much about the full views held by the crackpot; he would certainly have…
oracknows | October 3, 2009...from PZ Myers at the AAI Convention:
The good news for all the critics of this choice is that Dawkins pulled no punches. In his introduction, he praised Religulous and thanked Maher for his contributions to freethought, but he also very clearly and unambiguously stated that some of his beliefs about medicine were simply crazy. He did a good job of walking a difficult tightrope; he made it clear that the award was granted for some specific worthy matters, his humorous approach to religion, while carefully dissociating the AAI from any endorsement of crackpot medicine. It won't be enough, I…
oracknows | October 2, 2009...for Bill Maher to receive the Richard Dawkins Award. It was a huge mistake on the part of the Atheist Alliance International to award it, for the reasons I've repeated ad nauseam over the last couple of weeks; so I won't go there again.
What I really want to know is what happened. I can't be in L.A. this weekend. Actually, I'd much rather be in London for TAM London than in L.A. anyway. Unfortunately, I can't be in either place (although I will be going to Chicago next weekend for the American College of Surgeons Clinical Congress; keep that in mind if any of you Chicagoans wants to try a…
oracknows | October 2, 2009And so it begins.
Well, it hasn't really just begun. In fact, it's been going on a long time. I'm talking about confusing correlation with causation when it comes to vaccines. For example, the "vaccines cause autism" variety of the anti-vaccine movement blatantly confuses the correlation with the beginning of the increase in autism diagnoses in the 1990s with the expansion of the vaccine schedule that occurred at roughly the same time. The same sort of thing is going on regarding the HPV vaccine. It began first with the credulous referring to reports of reactions to the Vaccine Adverse Events…
oracknows | October 1, 2009This two-part video trashes common antivaccine arguments better than any video I've seen in a long time:
That's right. Vaccines educate the immune system, and Generation Rescue is full of...well, you know what it's full of.
Now if only Bill Maher would watch these videos. Let's make 'em go viral!
oracknows | October 1, 2009...you'll know why.
I got my flu shot today! Yes, it had thimerosal and everything. Give me mercury, baby!
And, guess what? When our hospital gets its supply of H1N1 vaccine later this month, I'll be getting that one, too.
Take that, Doug Bremner! Oh, and you too, Bill Maher!
oracknows | October 1, 2009
The endgame is in sight. At the end of this post is a list of questions for Bill Maher tomorrow (if the opportunity presents itself), the vast majority of which you, my readers, thought of.
Let's backtrack a minute.
A couple of months ago, I learned that an award named after Richard Dawkins was being given to someone who was so radically, unbelievably unworthy of such an honor, that I likened giving the Richard Dawkins Award to Bill Maher to giving a public health award to Jenny McCarthy. (In deference to Professor Dawkins, perhaps I'll now liken it to giving such an award to MMR anti-…
oracknows | September 30, 2009I love this guy's explanations of skepticism and critical thinking.
In this installment, it is quite clearly and cleverly why it's impossible to "prove" the existence of God or any god and thus why such gods are always a matter of faith and belief without evidence:
oracknows | September 30, 2009I wil probably lose some respect from some of my readers by admitting this, but I've always had a bit of a soft spot for Dan Brown novels. I actually enjoyed The Da Vinci Code immensely as a jolly good read, as long as you're not too much of a stickler for anything resembling historical accuracy. Ditto Angels & Demons, although even I cringed at one of the most ham-handed bits of author foreshadowing every put into a highly popular novel. (Those of you who've read Angels & Demons no doubt know exactly what I'm talking about.) In fact, I'll probably eventually get a copy of Dan Brown's…
oracknows | September 29, 2009I realize that every blogger and his or her grandmother has been posting this lately, but I only just got around to watching it last night. It's surprisingly pleasant and tuneful:
Really cool.
oracknows | September 29, 2009One of the most frustrating aspects of so-called "complementary and alternative medicine" is how much it's managed to bypass the scientific orientation of academic medical institutions and insinuate itself deeply into medical academia. Indeed, Dr. R. W. Donnell once quite aptly referred to this phenomenon, where wildly implausible claims with no science behind them somehow find truck in some of the oldest and most prestigious academic medical centers, as "quackademic medicine." Therapeutic touch, reiki, acupuncture, it doesn't matter. Somehow, much of medical academia seems to have forgotten…
oracknows | September 28, 2009I promised last week in a post in which I described Bill Maher's latest pro-quackery remarks (this time, supporting cancer quackery), today is the day that I'm going to ask you, my readers, for some help. As I complained a while back, Bill Maher, who is anything but a rationalist or a booster of science (at least when it comes to medicine) is being awarded the Richard Dawkins Award by the Atheist Alliance International at its convention this weekend in Los Angeles.
As I said before, given that (1) the award lists "advocates increased scientific knowledge" as one of its criteria; (2) that…
oracknows | September 27, 2009Khhaaaaaannnn!
I mean, Arriiiaaaaannaaa!
Ever since its very inception, I've been--shall we say?--less than enthusiastic about the Huffington Post's medical blogging. Indeed, the level of anti-vaccine rhetoric there from the very beginning, back in 2005, astounded me. If anything, HuffPo's record has gotten even worse over the last four years, be it Deepak Chopra, or, in 2009, the addition of a variety of quacks to its roster, not to mention a brain-blisteringly stupid anti-vaccine rant by Fire Marshal Bill--I mean Jim Carrey--the promotion of "functional medicine" quackery by Mark Hyman, "…
oracknows | September 27, 2009I didn't know that Bill Maher used Twitter, but I do now:
The original Tweet is here.
Gee, given their similar comments about flu shots being "for idiots," you don't think that Bill Maher and Doug Bremner are the same person, do you? Maybe they were separated at birth! In any case, perhaps we should see how many of us can be blocked by Maher by telling him that if you call people who get their flu shots idiots, you're the real idiot.
Here's a hint, Bill. If crackpots like those at Age of Autism love your stand on vaccines, you've gone down the same road as the Gardasil crackpots you…
oracknows | September 26, 2009Sadly, this is not too far from how religious disputes seem to be settled. The only difference is that there's less violence here than there is in real life:
Hmmm. Maybe it wouldn't be such a bad thing if religious conflicts could be resolved by an Ultimate Praying Challenger, rather than the usual way. As the reporter said, "Who's closer to God now, bitch?"
Hat tip to Stupid Evil Bastard.
oracknows | September 25, 2009Damn them Europeans and their being five or six hours ahead! They screw me up when it comes to plugging the Skeptics' Circle. Oh, wait. This time around I'm a day late. Rats. My excuse doesn't work. Never mind...
In any case, longtime commenter at RI (who also has his own most excellent blog), Kristjan Wager has served up yet another heapin' helpin' of skepticism and critical thinking at the 120th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle. Go. Read. Enjoy.
Then come back in two weeks to do the same for The Mad Skeptic on October 8, preferably after having submitted your own pearl of skeptical genius.…