oracknows | May 4, 2009Ugh.
Double ugh.
Sitting in my e-mail in box this morning were lots of your e-mails warning me about a bit of news that shows definitively that Oprah Winfrey is beyond redemption, at least when it comes to any sort of medicine or science (not nice, given that I hadn't even had my morning coffee yet).
The reason? Jenny McCarthy has inked a deal with Winfrey's Harpo Studios to develop a syndicated talk show and other media projects, including a blog, which has already started dishing out the stupid, albeit (thus far) not about vaccines and autism. Apparently sensing that her advocacy of the…
oracknows | May 4, 2009It's times like these when I'm happy that I haven't published in too many Elsevier Journals during the course of my career. I say that because on Thursday, it was revealed that pharmaceutical company Merck, Sharp & Dohme paid Elsevier to produce a fake medical journal that, to any superficial examination, looked like a real medical journal but was in reality nothing more than advertising for Merck. As reported by The Scientist:
Merck paid an undisclosed sum to Elsevier to produce several volumes of a publication that had the look of a peer-reviewed medical journal, but contained only…
oracknows | May 2, 2009...at least that seems to be the case with this couple:
Tourists enjoying a day of sightseeing at Windsor Castle got more than they bargained for today when a couple were caught having sex on the Queen's lawn.
Ignoring signs asking visitors to Please Keep Off The Grass, the man and woman, said to be in their early 30, selected a spot near the castle's Garter Tower and stripped off in full view of hotels, pubs and shops.
An employee at the Harte and Garter Hotel, which overlooks the castle, said guests went out to observe the scene and could not believe their eyes. The woman, who asked not to…
oracknows | May 2, 2009PalMD, PalMD, PalMD...why did you have to make me aware of this?
What Most Doctors Won't Tell You About Preparing for the Swine Flu
The blogger, Lisa Sharkey, opines:
What can I do to keep my family safe? How can I boost our immune systems now and what complementary medicines can I begin taking immediately, regardless if I ever come in contact with the dreaded Swine Flu?
You know what sort of answers are coming, I bet. That's right: Supplements, herbalism, homeopathy, reflexology, tapping, this post is a veritable cornucopia of quackery for swine flu, with Sharkey touting it all as "immune-…
oracknows | May 1, 2009I've been complaining about the antivaccine lunacy at The Huffington Post for a very long time--since a mere two or three weeks after The Huffington Post first came into existence, when it had already become apparent that, in terms of health coverage, HuffPo was nothing more than Arianna's Happy Home for Loony Antivaccinationists. Lately, I've become even more disturbed by the appearance of outright quackery, such as recommending colon cleanses and "detox" to fight infectious diseases and the boosting of homeopathy and the quackery that is the Beck Protocol as treatments for swine flu and…
oracknows | May 1, 2009Ever since I started this little vanity bit known as Your Friday Dose of Woo, lo, these nearly three years ago, when I introduced the waiting blogosphere to the woo-tastic quantum homeopathic stylings of Lionel Milgrom, I've occasionally wondered if I had started out with too much woo. I mean, Milgrom is a really hard act to follow, so densely does he blend together the most amazing hard core homeopathic woo combined with quantum pseudoscientific posturings that put Deepak Chopra to shame, all tied together with the most awesomely dense, yet ultimately meaningless, equations that look like…
oracknows | April 30, 2009I apologize to my readers.
I apologize for continually blogging about the pseudoscience at The Huffington Post. Of late, it seems that I can't go more than a day or two without some new atrocity against science being tossed out from Arianna's happy home for antivaccinationists and quacks. Be it antivaccine lunacy, Deepak Chopra's "quantum" woo, or the latest quack stylings of Kim Evans, no woo is too woo-ey, no quackery too quacky, no pseudoscience too far out for HuffPo. In any case, HuffPo is a lot like blogging about the antivaccine movement. As I've characterized it again and again, it's…
oracknows | April 29, 2009Ten days ago, I made a bit of fun of the big, fat slobbery 120th birthday kiss that David Irving planted on Adolf Hitler's cheek (metaphorically speaking). At the time, I mentioned that there is one Hitler-related holiday that I can actually celebrate, and that day is here:
Führerstodestag.
Führer Death Day! 64 years ago today, April 30, the mass murdering dictator Adolf Hitler blew his brains out. Spread the word and wish all Holocaust deniers, fascists, and neo-Nazis a very unhappy Führerstodestag.
oracknows | April 29, 2009Sometimes I wonder just how people can be so messed up. I know, I know. I spend considerable time writing about fools and charlatans, but this is a different kind of messed up, in which hatefulness is added to the ignorance. Consider this story, sent to me by a reader:
"I'm 4 years old," he said, "and I have a sister named Olivia, and I ride my bike all day long."
He lives in a piece of suburbia that seems picturesque: the Venzano development in San Marcos. His parents, Gary and Marla Trussle, moved the family here five months ago.
"I thought it would be good for the children," Marla Trussle…
oracknows | April 29, 2009
Well, the weird news just keeps coming in from my hometown. This time around, consider the case of Tinker Bell. Tinker Bell is a tiny Chihuahua weighing all of five pounds. This poor little creature met nature in a most unfortunate way on Saturday, when some rather heavy storms swept through southeast Michigan. It turns out that storms and Chihuahuas don't mix very well (as you might expect), and poor Tinker Bell discovered that in a most harsh way:
Tinkerbelle was with her owners, Lavern and Dorothy Utley of Rochester, when a powerful storm swept into the Dixie Land Flea Market in…
oracknows | April 28, 2009No one brings home the stupid the way Michelle Bachmann does:
I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out then under another Democrat president Jimmy Carter. And I'm not blaming this on President Obama, I just think it's an interesting coincidence.
In just the same way that Kim Evans apparently doesn't know that there was no such thing as a flu vaccine during the 1918 pandemic, Michelle Bachman apparently doesn't know that the swine flu scare of 1976 occurred when Gerald Ford was President. In case Bachmann doesn't remember, Gerald Ford was a Republican.…
oracknows | April 28, 2009Because of the confusion over last week's Skeptics' Circle, I've been totally remiss in doing what I normally do, namely plugging the next host and urging all skeptical bloggers to start getting ready their best skeptical stuff for the Circle, which is next scheduled for May 7.
So next week the host is Ferret's Cage, whose contact information is here. So get cracking! You have only a little more than a week!
Also help him out because he's dealing with an infiltration of woo in his sister's school.
oracknows | April 28, 2009I know I've been ragging on The Huffington Post a lot lately. Trust me, I take no great pleasure in doing so. Indeed, more than anything else, it's been a major frustration for me. It's bad enough that HuffPo has been a hotbed of anti-vaccine propaganda and pseudoscience ever since its very inception, continuing through to today. Ditto Deepak Chopra, who has had a home there for at least three years now. But 2009 has been especially bad, adding proponents of distant healing, detox quackery, and, worst of all, the stylings of Kim Evans, a detox maven who thinks that antibiotics cause cancer.…
oracknows | April 27, 2009After having been bummed out at the invasion of faith healing and quackery in my hometown newspaper I came to something that bummed me out even more. Most readers here have probably never heard of the Michigan Central Station train depot. Suffice it to say that it is a huge train station that was, in its heyday at least, every bit as impressive as Grand Central Station in New York or Union Station in Chicago. Indeed, it's not for nothing that the Michigan Central Station was likened to "Michigan's Ellis Island," as it was frequently the first thing in Detroit that new arrivals saw, as this…
oracknows | April 27, 2009I've complained quite a bit about the news media in my hometown. Indeed, about a year ago, I was stunned at how utterly credulous one TV reporter was about--of all things--orbs. I mean, orbs! Even dedicated ghosthunters don't push orbs much anymore, realizing that they are nothing more than reflections or specks of dust reflecting lights in photographs. Then there's Steve Wilson and his forays into anti-vaccine nonsense, in which he recycles some of the oldest, most tired, most highly debunked canards. Lately, it's been some additional crappy reporting about Gardasil and a recent "autism"…
oracknows | April 26, 2009The short answer is: "Heck if I know." I heard from the host on the 19th, and he said it might be a day or two late. However, we're now out beyond three days, and still no Skeptics' Circle. True, there's a minimalist post with some of the links, but no Circle.
I have an e-mail in, but no response yet. I'm sorry for the delay and the confusion. I'll let you know what's going on when I know.
oracknows | April 25, 2009I just learned yesterday from a link a friend sent me and from Professor Deborah Lipstadt's blog that the team of producers who made The Soloist have optioned the movie rights to Professor Lipstadt's book History on Trial: My Day in Court With a Holocaust Denier, which is the story of the libel suit brought against her by Holocaust denier David Irving in the U.K., a lawsuit that Irving ultimately lost big time.
This is excellent news. Having read her book, as well as Richard Evans' account of the trial, Lying About Hitler: History, Holocaust, and the David Irving Trial, I had always thought…
oracknows | April 24, 2009I'm tired of blogging about anti-vaccine nonsense again. Don't get me wrong, I had an enormous amount of fun writing my commentary on Fire Marshal Bill's attempt to explain vaccine/autism pseudoscience. It was a hoot, if I do say so myself, but it depresses me that writing such posts is so necessary so often. Fortunately, it's Friday, and you know what that means (well, at least some of the time, anyway). That's right, it's time for some woo.
This time around, it's not just any woo. In fact, it's woo that relates to my area of expertise. As you may recall, I do a lot of breast cancer surgery…
oracknows | April 23, 2009Better late than never, given that DrugMonkey has already been all over this. Unfortunately, there was another serious outbreak of antivaccine idiocy over at HuffPo that I felt I had to deal with before this:
Embedded video from CNN Video
It was a great day indeed. For far too long, animal rights terrorists have intimidated reesarchers into silence. According to the L.A. Times:
Competing rallies at UCLA today over the controversial issue of animal research are peaceful so far, with supporters of the research appearing to outnumber opponents by more than 10 to 1.
About 400 people,…
oracknows | April 22, 2009
After writing about a new low of pseudoscience published in that repository of all things antivaccine and quackery, The Huffington Post (do you even have to ask?), on Tuesday, I had hoped--really hoped--that I could ignore HuffPo for a while. After all, there's only so much stupid that even Orac can tolerate before his logic circuits start shorting out and he has to shut down a while so that his self-repair circuits can undo the damage. Besides, I sometimes think that the twit who created HuffPo, Arianna Huffington, likes the attention that pseudoscience turds dropped onto her blog by…