oracknows | November 23, 2008Well, now there's something that doesn't happen to me every day--or every week. Or every month. Or every year, at least not for quite a while.
Last night I stopped at our local supermarket to pick up a couple of things, one of which was a six pack of one of my favorite local brews. As the guy behind the counter checked me out, something happened that I haven't had happen to me in at least a decade.
He asked to see my ID.
The only explanation I can think of is that I was wearing a hat the covered up my graying hair, but, even so, I don't think my face has looked as though I might be under 21 (…
oracknows | November 22, 2008Well, this is depressing to learn. I'd be even more depressed if I were Canadian. All I can say to my neighbors to the north is that I feel your pain, albeit belatedly. I just learned that the recently appointed Minister of State for Science and Technology within Prime Minister Stephen Harper's Cabinet is Gary Goodyear. So what's the big deal?
Gary Goodyear is an chiropractor. Not only that, but he's an acupuncturist, too. Nothing like putting someone who believes in pseudoscience in charge of science and technology. I wonder how that will work out.
Now, for Harper's next appointment, let's…
oracknows | November 21, 2008Leave it to an infectious disease specialist (Dr. Mark Crislip) to dismantle the most recent favorite talking point of the antivaccine fringe, namely "too many too soon," that deceptive and scientifically ignorant concept that somehow the current vaccine schedule "overwhelms" the immune system of infants, causing all manner of chronic health conditions and neurological problems, including autism. In his usual characteristic level of sarcasm that earns him a tip of the hat as far as not-so-respectful insolence goes, he entitles his lesson:
The infection schedule versus the vaccine schedule.
It…
oracknows | November 21, 2008
I had thought about taking the day off after celebrating the 100th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle yesterday, but a skeptic's work is never done, and, besides, my wife's out of town for a couple of days. Given the choice of television, working on my program's section of our cancer center core grant or one of the two other grants I'm currently juggling, or blogging, I wonder what appeals to me more. Hmmmm....
Ah, screw it. I've been living my work nearly every waking hour for the last few days. Heck, I even got stuck at work fairly late last night because of the bane of being s surgeon,…
oracknows | November 20, 2008
PROLOGUE
LOCATION: The Liberator, cruising through space.
GAN: Are you sure it's fully switched on?
ORAC: Of course I'm properly switched on. Having depressed the activator button what else would you expect?
CALLY: It's his voice.
BLAKE: It's exactly as though Ensor were speaking.
ORAC: Surely it is obvious even to the meanest intelligence that during my development I would naturally become endowed with aspects of my creator's personality.
AVON: The more endearing aspects by the sound of it.
ORAC: Possibly. However similarities between myself and Ensor are entirely superficial. My mental…
oracknows | November 19, 2008I realize this story is a week old, but it's something I wanted to do a quick blog post on, and what better excuse than to get it done before tomorrow's Skeptics' Circle? Looking at a list of The 50 facts you might not know about Barack Obama, I found out that I share quite a few interests with our President-Elect. For example:
He collects Spider-Man and Conan the Barbarian comics
I find it way cool that our new President collects comics. Until recently, I collected Spider-Man comics too; that is, until the writers decided to ruin the comic with a Brand New Day storyline that "rebooted" the…
oracknows | November 19, 2008It looks as though the Jenny McCarthy woo factor has claimed two more celebrity victims' brains. If a recently viewed press release is any indication, it appears that Anthony Edwards and Dustin Hoffman are getting into the autism quackery business:
Internet Marketing Company joins Jenny McCarthy, Jim Carrey, Dustin Hoffman, Anthony Edwards and others in fight to help children with Autism.
GREENSBORO, N.C. (June 4, 2008) -- Market America announced today that it is in the development and testing stages of a new line of nutraceutical products that will support the health of children with Autism…
oracknows | November 19, 2008Busy, busy, busy.
Between work and getting ready to for the 100th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle on Thursday as I mentioned on Monday, I'm afraid I don't have time for my usual sterling gems of skeptically insolent prose or an analysis of a scientific paper that a couple of my readers have sent me. If too many science or medical bloggers haven't totally deconstructed it by then, maybe I'll take it on either on Friday or Monday. Until then, if you haven't gotten me an entry to the Skeptics' Circle yet, you still have about 12 hours left until the deadline at 6 PM EST.
In the meantime, that…
oracknows | November 18, 2008I was in a bit of a crappy mood last night.
There were a number of reasons for this, including frustration at work trying to put together two grants, trying to revise a manuscript to resubmit it, dealing with collaborators and various other headaches. Indeed I had a splitting headache by the end of the day when I finally hit the road for the commute home. Things were so bad that I seriously considered actually going to bed and not bothering at all with the blog. I know, I know, such a thing has seldom happened in the nearly four years I've been doing this blog. It must be my obsessive…
oracknows | November 17, 2008Everyone knows that the quackery-friendly, antivaccine blog Age of Autism has a rather--shall we say?--hypocritical stance when it comes to free speech. For one thing, for all their complaints about censorship and not being heard by the government, its denizens frequently confuse freedom of speech with freedom from criticism. For another thing, they also ruthlessly censor comments that they do not like on their blog itself. Worst of all, they tacitly support the "outing" of pseudonymous commenters if such commenters annoy them enough.
Someone's finally gotten tired of it. Indeed, someone has…
oracknows | November 17, 2008I almost feel sorry for acupuncturists these days. Almost.
Well, not exactly. Clearly, given the infiltration of woo into academic medicine, acupuncturists are in demand even in the most allegedly "science-based" of academic medical centers. After all, acupuncture is what I like to refer to as "gateway woo," an unscientific placebo-based therapy that has somehow come to be viewed as seemingly respectable, as though there's something to it. It's not hard to see why acupuncture has achieved this status. Indeed, there was a time when I, the arch-skeptic, the guy who has built up one of the top…
oracknows | November 16, 2008As hard as it is to believe, it's almost here. In a mere four days on Thursday, November 20, the 100th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle will land right here at its mothership for the first time in three years. As of this morning, I only have six submissions. That's not nearly enough! I need more, lots more, by 5 PM EST on Wednesday. Send them to orac@scienceblogs.com.
Don't make me start perusing skeptical blogs to raid and pillage posts as I see fit. You wouldn't like that, and neither would I, as I somehow managed to schedule myself to do this little shindig during a particularly insane week…
oracknows | November 15, 2008Downfall was a great movie, arguably the greatest movie about Adolf Hitler's final days ever made. However, it contains one scene, one incredibly powerful scene, where aides bring Hitler news that the last defenses had fallen, that the divisions that Hitler thought he had no longer existed, and that the forces that were trying to reach Berlin to fight the Russians had been repulsed. It was at this point that Hitler finally realized that there was nothing left to stop the Soviet juggernaut from taking Berlin. At this point, Hitler finally realizes that the war is lost and that there is no hope…
oracknows | November 14, 2008I realize that I made perhaps the biggest splash I've made on this blog in a very, very long time when I wrote about the news reports and rumors that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. was being seriously considered for a high ranking post in the new Obama Administration. Fortunately, this is not yet another post about RFK, Jr. There's only so much antivaccinationist and pseudoscientific lunacy I can take. Unfortunately, however, it's another touch of woo associated with the new administration. Even though I don't think it means much, chiropractors seem to be interpreting it as a nod of support:
I am…
oracknows | November 13, 2008Yesterday, I wrote about the sad case of Motl Brody, a 12-year-old Orthodox Jew whose brain tumor had rendered him brain dead and whose parents are fighting the efforts of the hospital to disconnect him from the ventilator and to stop all the powerful cardiac drugs that are keeping his heart beating and his blood pressure high enough because their religion tells them that death is defined by cessation of heartbeat and breathing. They do not accept the concept of brain death, even though they do accept that their child will never recover.
Yale neurologist and all-around skeptical guru Steve…
oracknows | November 13, 2008
The things I do for my readers.
I'm referring to a movie entitled The Beautiful Truth, links to whose website and trailers several of you have e-mailed to me over the last couple of weeks. Maybe it's because the movie is only showing in New York and Los Angeles and hasn't made it out of the media enclaves of those cities out to the rest of us in flyover country, or maybe its release is so limited that I just hadn't heard of it. Certainly that appears to be the case, as the schedule shown at the website lists it as beginning an engagement in New York tomorrow and running through November 20…
oracknows | November 12, 2008I realize that the title of this post might sound as though I'm equating brain death and fundamentalist religion. As tempting as it is sometimes to do so, I'm not. What I'm more interested in is a story I came across by way of ScienceBlogs Big Kahuna blogger P.Z. Myers last night, mainly because it brings up some serious ethical issues, aside from any religious issues. P.Z. tackled the story as he usually does tackle stories involving religion, with all the subtlety of a jack hammer in a glass factory.
I'm not saying that I'll necessarily be subtle, but I do have some actual, hands-on…
oracknows | November 11, 2008Since I've been on the topic of the Holocaust again today in giving a victim of the Hitler Zombie a well and truly deserved taste of not-so-Respectful Insolence, before I get back to medicine and science tomorrow I can't help but note that it's been brought to my attention that a brand, spankin' new Jack Chick tract has made an appearance to darken the Internet for critical thinkers and skeptics everywhere. Heck, Chick's fundamentalist religious craziness is so toxic that rational believers (and even many not-so-rational believers) undergo a wave of neuronal apoptosis any time he appears.…
oracknows | November 11, 2008November 4, 2008
11:15 PM EST
A mousy little man sat, shaking his head in his hands, limned against the wall by the flickering blue glow of a flat screen TV. On the television, a huge crowd swelled in Grant Park in Chicago. The excitement was palpable, with a constant dull roar of the crowd that swelled periodically as the crowd thought that they saw the man whom they'd come to see.
The mousy man muttered, "How could this have happened?" He slumped back into his chair. "How?"
On the television, the object of his hatred strode upon the stage in front of the adoring crowd and began to speak.…
oracknows | November 10, 2008One whole year of antivaccinationist lunacy, that is.
Sorry, that's one birthday I won't be sending good wishes over. No other blog brings home the stupid when it comes to vaccines with such regularity. It's a veritable black hole of intellect there, from which no science and reason is ever seen to escape.