oracknows | April 22, 2009I'm sure it's obvious that I'm often puzzled (and, I daresay, many other skeptics and boosters of science- and evidence-based medicine are puzzled too) over why various forms of quackery and woo that have either about as close to zero prior probability as one can imagine and/or (more frequently "and") have failed to show evidence of any therapeutic effect greater than that of placebo in clinical trials manage to retain so much traction among the public. Examples abound, for instance homeopathy and reiki, the former of which is nothing more than sympathetic magic prettied up with science-y…
oracknows | April 21, 2009I'm really starting to hate the Huffington Post.
It used to be that I just disliked it intensely. The reasons are, of course, obvious. Ever since its very beginning nearly four years ago, HuffPo has been a hotbed of antivaccine lunacy. Over the years, it's served up pseudoscience and antivaccine nuttery from such "luminaries" of the antivaccine movement as David Kirby, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Dr. Jay Gordon, Deirde Imus, among others, in an unholy tradition that continues to this very day. HuffPo didn't limit itself to just antivaccine lunacy, either. It wasn't long before the Dark Lord of…
oracknows | April 20, 2009Blog bud PalMD was asked this most difficult question:
A colleague of mine asked a great question: if you have one question to ask a booster of so-called alternative medicine in a public forum, what should it be?
To which he responded:
My answer: "Can you please give specific examples of alternative medicine theories and modalities that have been abandoned because they have been found to be ineffective?"
I tend to agree. If there's one difference between so-called "alternative" medicine and science- and evidence-based medicine, it's that ineffective therapies in general are abandoned. Now, I…
oracknows | April 20, 2009David Irving has made a career out of being a Holocaust denier and then protesting when someone calls him a Holocaust denier. As you may recall, he even sued Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt for correctly referring to him as a Holocaust denier in one of her books.
Let's take a look at what's on his website today. If you go to Irving's main website and click on today's newsletter, this is what you will see as a flash screen before the website goes to the newsletter:
That's right! It's a big fat, sloppy 120th birthday kiss to Adolf Hitler, straight from David "I'm not a Holocaust denier…
oracknows | April 20, 2009About a week and a half ago, something happened that makes me realize that the Jenny and Jim antivaccine propaganda tour that I mentioned a couple of weeks ago was clearly only phase I of Generation Rescue's April public relations offensive. About ten days ago, courtesy of J.B. Handley, the founder of Generation Rescue, who in order to have a couple of famous faces fronting his organization has allowed himself to be displaced, so that Generation Rescue has now been "reborn" as Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey's Autism Organization (the better to capitalize on her D-list celebrity yoked to Jim…
oracknows | April 19, 2009I forgot to mention yesterday (although I did on Twitter) that I'm currently in Denver, where I will be attending the 100th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), as I do almost every year at this time. I hope to see, as Isis would put it, some hot, hot science over the next three and a half days. In between sessions, I'll be putting the finishing touches on my Challenge Grant, seeing old friends, and possibly even blogging. The frequency depends upon (1) how many old friends I see and (2) how good or crappy the wifi is at the Colorado Convention Center.
In the…
oracknows | April 18, 2009One more reason why John Stewart and his writers are geniuses is here, where he examines the "Tea Parties" we in the U.S. were subjected to three days ago, including one in my own town:
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart
M - Th 11p / 10c
Nationwide Tax Protests
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes
Economic Crisis
Political Humor
How is it that to the right comparing Bush to Hitler was overblown and unfair over a great many issues, including the war in Iraq (a criticism that I actually agreed with, even though I was thoroughly opposed to the war--think Hitler Zombie),…
oracknows | April 17, 2009I've complained about it time and time again because it's annoyed me time and time again. Specifically, I'm talking about how various news outlets report scientific studies involving so-called "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM), sometimes called "integrative medicine" (IM), the latter of which I like to refer to adding a bit of woo to make the scientific medicine go down. In general, because the press likes stories that buck the establishment, it tends to favor studies that seem to show that CAM modalities work. Even worse, it tends to misinterpret negative studies in the most…
oracknows | April 16, 2009One of the stereotypes of anti-vaccine loons is that they are predominantly left wing New Agey ex-hippie types, usually well-educated and affluent. Certainly recent stories out of California indicating that Marin and Sonoma counties are ground zero for declining vaccine rates would seem to back up that stereotype. However, there is a right wing religious variety of antivaccinationist, and it's hard not to point out that Representative Dan Burton (R-IN) is arguably the best friend the mercury militia has in Washington. But if you want to get a true flavor of right wing paranoid whackaloon,…
oracknows | April 16, 2009For skeptics, TV news in my hometown sucks.
Actually, it sucks for just about anyone with two brain cells to rub together, but it's especially painful for skeptics and scientists to watch. On one station last year, there was the most credulous report I've ever seen about--of all things--orbs! It was presented as though these "orbs" in photos were actually ghosts or spirit presences, rather than the reflections from bits of dust in the air or on the camera lens that we know them to be. As I pointed out at the time, not even die-hard ghostbusters take orbs seriously anymore. They're so...1970s…
oracknows | April 15, 2009There's an old saying, so old that it's devolved into cliché: Be careful what you wish for; you just might get it. I'm sure the vast majority of my readers, if not every last one of them, have heard this saying before. Certainly, it has a lot of truth to it. Sometimes it even applies to blogging. The most recent example that comes to mind occurred yesterday, when a commenter named David M. taunted me (or so he thought):
I know you all like to pick on actresses, college students and parents with sick kids, but how about taking a look at the column by Dr. Bernadine Healy on U.S. News. She used…
oracknows | April 14, 2009Remember the Jenny McCarthy Body Count website that I mentioned last month? Basically, it's a website that uses CDC reports and other sources of information to estimate the number of cases of and deaths from vaccine-preventable diseases in the U.S. since Jenny McCarthy started her antivaccine crusade back in late summer 2007. The site points out that it is not blaming Jenny McCarthy for all this disease and death but that she should bear at least part of the blame for them because she has become the public face of the radical antivaccine movement. That's something I've been saying for a while…
oracknows | April 14, 2009Recently, there's been a movement afoot among purveyors of that special brand of "natural" woo known as naturopathy to convince various legislatures and regulatory bodies that they not only are capable of serving as primary care physicians but that they should be allowed to do so. My first impression was laughter--that is, until I realized that the naturopaths are serious. For example, in New York, naturopaths, spearheaded by the New York Association of Naturopathic Physicians, are lobbying to be given the power to prescribe medications. Never mind that, despite their claims to the contrary,…
oracknows | April 13, 2009You be the judge!
And patriotic, too!
Huh, huh, huh. He said "stimulus package."
oracknows | April 13, 2009Nearly two weeks ago, P.Z. Myers mentioned a story that would normally have provoked a post by me. Specifically, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops had issued a warning against the use of reiki as being unscientific, unproven, and, worse, "dangerous to Christian spiritual health." Unfortunately, this story came out right before Autism Awareness Month and the all out spring offensive by antivaccinationists fronted by Jenny McCarthy, along with all the nonsense that entails, and my attention rapidly got sidetracked. The reason I've come back to it is that I recently learned that defenders…
oracknows | April 12, 2009Better late than never, I guess. Martin of Lay Scientist had some technical difficulties and was a bit late in delivering his Skeptics' Circle, the 109th Meeting of the Skeptics Circle. Suffice it to say that it features some...unexpected characters.
Next up two weeks hence is Waffle. Contact information is here. Bloggers, get your best skeptical work ready!
oracknows | April 11, 2009Readers may have noticed that we've had a minor antivaccine troll infestation in a couple of previous posts. It's no big deal of course, hardly worth my attention--except for one thing. That one thing is that a certain member of the antivaccine propaganda blog Age of Autism, for which no evidence that vaccines are not associated with autism is strong enough to penetrate its collective Borg-like hivemind and no study suggesting that vaccines are associated with autism is too execrable not to trumpet to the high heavens as "vindication" that the antivaccine cult is correct, arrived to tell us…
oracknows | April 10, 2009
If there's one concept that seems to cross many "disciplines" of woo (a.k.a. "alternative medicine," a.k.a. "complementary and alternative medicine," a.k.a. CAM) is the concept of some sort of "life force" or "life energy." It is true that life does depend upon the utilization of energy, specifically chemical energy. That's what biologists and biochemists mean when they talk about life energy, but that's not what woo-meisters mean by "life energy." Rather, what woo-meisters mean by "life energy" can best be described as some sort of magical mystery energy field that means the difference…
oracknows | April 10, 2009...our Skeptics' Circle host for this week, The Lay Scientist, had some technical issues with his blog. It should be forthcoming later today...
oracknows | April 9, 2009Whatever you think of President Obama's economic stimulus package, there's one thing that I, at least, am happy to learn about it:
Vice President Joe Biden announced today that the Obama Administration will make $2.3 billion available for crucial health and human services programs that help to provide care for children and prevent disease. States will receive $2 billion in Recovery Act funding to support child care for working families. The administration also plans to make $300 million in vaccines and grants available to ensure more underserved Americans receive the vaccines they need…