oracknows | June 23, 2009Over the last month or so, I've written numerous posts about Daniel Hauser. Danny, as you recall, is the 13-year-old Minnesota boy who was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma back in February, underwent one round of chemotherapy for it, and then decided that he wanted to pursue quackery instead of more chemotherapy. His mother supported his decision and justified it by appealing to a faux Native American religion known as Nemenhah, which is, in reality, nothing more than an excuse for its originator, a wannabe who named himself Chief Cloudpiler, to sell quackery under the guise of "Native…
oracknows | June 22, 2009It's no secret that, when it comes to computers, my preferred axe has been the Apple Macintosh. Indeed, back in the 1983-1984 school year I was in college living in a house with five other guys, and one of my roommates was a a total Apple geek. He had, as one might expect, an Apple IIe, and I immediately decided that, when it came to computers, I definitely liked the Apple product better than the IBM PC that my other roommate had. Of course, at the time I was nowhere well off enough to be able to afford either, but these two roommates were both computer science majors. They had to have a…
oracknows | June 21, 2009This reminds me of my trip to England two years ago, when my wife and I did visit Stonehenge:
However, what I'd really love is to have the title this guy has:
Druid King Arthur Pendragon told the BBC shortly before sunrise: "It's a very nice atmosphere and everything's fine at the moment.
"There have been more police present this year, more security, but everything's passed off very jovially and everyone's in a good mood.
"And the police for the most part are wishing people a happy solstice and so are the security guards."
Druid King? How cool is that? Think of it: Druid King Orac.…
oracknows | June 20, 2009Homeopathy Awareness Week is almost over, alas. I hope I've done a good job at making my readers even more "aware" of just how silly the principles of homeopathy are. To finish up, I thought I'd repost a bit of "classic insolence" from three years ago, because it's dedicated to one of the most amazing homeopathic woo-meisters I've ever seen: Lionel Milgrom. It was also the very first post I ever did for Your Friday Dose of Woo.
Enjoy!
While thinking about ways to make the blog better, I wondered if I should emulate some of my colleagues, many of whom have regular features every week, often on…
oracknows | June 19, 2009With Homeopathy Awareness Week rapidly approaching its end, I wondered just what I could do to bring further "awareness" of just how bogus and full of woo the concepts of homeopathy are. True, discussing homeopathic plutonium as a remedy and how homeopaths did "provings" of it the other day was fun, but surely there's more. What other homeopathic "remedies" (quotation marks used because of a complaint about my having actually used the term "remedy" to describe homeopathy, given that any true homeopathic remedy is diluted so much that there's nothing left but water--or alcohol, if that is what…
oracknows | June 18, 2009Don't forget to get your fortnight's dose of skepticism right here, as The Unincredible Hallq serves up the latest Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle. It's another tasty concoction of skepticism, critical thinking, and science.
Next up on July 2 will be a newcomer and first time host, Homologous Legs. If you're a blogger with a skeptical bent, start sharpening your pencils (metaphorically speaking, of course--who uses pencils to blog?), and be sure to send your best stuff for the 114th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle. Then join us here two weeks hence!
oracknows | June 18, 2009
Last night, I was sitting on the couch, my laptop, appropriately enough, on my lap creating my paean to Homeopathy Awareness Week in which I had a little fun discussing homeopathic plutonium. Because Homeopathy Awareness week is not yet over, I'll probably have one more bit of fun at the expense of The One Woo To Rule Them All before it's over. However, while I was getting into the possibilities suggested to me by diluting and succussing plutonium in order to treat all sorts of "Pluto-y" illnesses, I happened to flip through the channels, when what to my wondering eyes should appear but a…
oracknows | June 17, 2009Will wonders never cease? A recent story about how "homeopathic" Zicam managed to slide through a loophole in which the FDA doesn't require evidence of efficacy or safety for medicines labeled as homeopathic has been percolating through the blogosphere based on a recent warning that the FDA issued. It turns out that the zinc in Zicam can mess up your sense of smell, causing a loss of the sense called anosmia. Steve Novella has already done an excellent job of discussing the issues involved with this loophole, which is big enough to pilot the proverbial Death Star through.
However, a followup…
oracknows | June 17, 2009In keeping with Homeopathy Awareness Week (which still runs until June 21), I can't resist commenting on this gem of a story that was sent to me the other day. I mean, we're talking super duper heaving shopping in the very heart of London. It turns out that the Helios Homeopathy Shop right in Covent Garden will fix you up with homeopathic plutonium if you need it:
Dr Fiona Barclay, a chemist at RGB Research in west London, made this discovery. Her company specialises in selling collections of the periodic table elements (with the exception of those elements that are illegal or are so very…
oracknows | June 16, 2009When it comes to antivaccinationists, The Onion, as for most things, nails it.
Don't vaccinate not because science shows no link between vaccines and autism but rather because, you know, Jenny McCarthy has some really convincing anecdotes.
When antivaccine loons are the butt of jokes on The Onion saying that they're endangering children, they should beware. Few things cut as deep as an Onion parody.
oracknows | June 16, 2009Here we go again.
You may have noticed that I've been laying off that repository of quackery, autism pseudoscience, and anti-vaccine nonsense, The Huffington Post. I assure you, it's not because things have gotten much better there. Oh, sure, occasionally someone will try to post something resembling science and rationality, but it's impossible for so few to overcome so much history and so much woo. Indeed, even when someone tries, he can't help but be sucked into the morass of pseudoscience that is HuffPo. For example, Dr. Harvey Karp (the same guy who went toe-to-toe with Dr. Jay Gordon--…
oracknows | June 15, 2009On Friday, I expressed my irritation at the misunderstanding of science by NEWSWEEK's science columnist Sharon Begley, in which she opines that it is those nasty basic scientists who insist on learning new science and new physiological mechanisms of disease that are devaluing translational and clinical research, in effect ghettoizing them in low impact journals, and, as I sarcastically put it, "keeping teh curez from sick babiez!!!!!"
It turns out that both Steve Novella, Mike the Mad Biologist, and Tim Kreider have also weighed in. All are worth reading.
I also thought of another thing…
oracknows | June 14, 2009Last month, a frequent topic of this blog was the case of Daniel Hauser, the 13-year-old boy from Minnesota with Hodgkin's lymphoma who made the national news for his refusal (and his mother's support of that refusal) to undergo a second round of chemotherapy. Instead, he wanted to pursue "natural" therapy, including what sounded like alkalinization quackery. What was especially disturbing about this case was that he had a highly treatable form of cancer with close to a 90% expectation of long term survival with conventional treatment with chemotherapy and radiation. As with the cases of…
oracknows | June 14, 2009Don't forget, everyone: The Skeptics' Circle is fast approaching. It's due to appear at The Unincredible Hallq on Thursday, June 18. Don't forget to get your submissions to Chris here before it's too late. Guidelines are here.
oracknows | June 14, 2009I bet you didn't know this (maybe because of homeopathic publicity), but today is the first day of Homeopathy Awareness Week, which runs from June 14 to 21.
It turns out that I'm torn over whether to mention or do much about this. On the one hand, publicizing the magical, mystical thinking that is homeopathy serves a purpose in emphasizing time and time again just how utterly implausible from a scientific standpoint homeopathy is, how most studies showing and "effect" from homeopathy are seriously flawed, and how the best quality studies of homeopathy show it to be no more effective than a…
oracknows | June 13, 2009What should a doctor recommend for a 90 year old man with pancreatic cancer and liver metastases? Palliative care? Hospice? Those would seem to be the most reasonable options. If I were that 90 year old man, that's what I'd recommend. Unfortunately, I know from experience that that is all too often not what happens. I know and have seen the ordering of many invasive tests that won't change the outcome.
So does Buckeye Surgeon.
American medicine, as it is practiced now, all too often takes on a momentum that is very difficult to stop, a momentum demanding more, more, more, more, even in the…
oracknows | June 12, 2009I was very happy with NEWSWEEK recently, specifically because of its lengthy expose of Oprah Winfrey and her promotion of pseudoscience, mysticism, and quackery on her talk show. However, I haven't always been that thrilled with NEWSWEEK's coverage of medicine and science. For example, NEWSWEEK's science columnist Sharon Begley has gotten on my nerves on more than one occasion, most recently when she castigated doctors for not enthusiastically embracing comparative effectiveness research, making the unjustified slur against physicians that they "hate science." Indeed, she even managed to…
oracknows | June 11, 2009I know I've been very hard on Oprah Winfrey the last couple of weeks, taking her to task for her promotion on her show of medicine that is at best dubious and at worst quackery, as promoted by frequent guests like Suzanne Somers, Dr. Christiane Northrup, and the queen of the anti-vaccine movement, Jenny "I'm not anti-vaccine but would never, ever vaccinate" McCarthy. Not that Oprah cares. After all, she's Oprah, and I'm only a lowly blogger who, although having one of the top medical blogs out there, is as an ant to Oprah's elephant of a media empire. Still, NEWSWEEK did a fantastic expose of…
oracknows | June 10, 2009I never thought I'd see it, but I have. After an a decent article on the infiltration of quackademic medicine into American medical centers and a very good article on cancer quackery, Marilyn Marchione of the AP has done it again:
AP IMPACT: $2.5B spent, no alternative med cures
It almost seems as though Ms. Marchione is channeling Orac:
BETHESDA, Md. -- Ten years ago the government set out to test herbal and other alternative health remedies to find the ones that work. After spending $2.5 billion, the disappointing answer seems to be that almost none of them do.
Echinacea for colds. Ginkgo…
oracknows | June 10, 2009One of the common topics I discuss on this blog is Holocaust denial. Indeed, I've been opposing Holocaust denial on various online forums for ten years now. I've castigated David Irving, mocked Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for his worldwide Holocaust denial conference, and made frequent comments about how Holocaust denial is inextricably linked with anti-Semitism and racism, often directly due to the white nationalist movement (or, as I like to refer to white supremacists, mighty white power rangers).
That's why I was very saddened to learn about what happened at the Holocaust Museum earlier today:…