oracknows | August 13, 2008
...you'd better run for cover!
Truly, you can't make--if you'll excuse the term--shit like this up.
Let the jokes begin!
oracknows | August 13, 2008THWOMP!
THWOMP! THWOMP!
TWHOMP! THWOMP! TWHOMP!
That's the sound of me hitting my head against the table. Hard.
What provoked this reaction in me is Medscape, specifically an article that my blog bud PalMD turned me on to. That the article, entitled HPV Vaccine Deemed Safe and Effective, Despite Reports of Adverse Events, seems to have been written in response to criticism of its previous article on the HPV vaccine Gardasil, both by me and others, criticism that led Medscape to quietly pull the old article, makes the resultant article seem even worse, particularly in wake of a truly dumb poll…
oracknows | August 12, 2008By this stage of the game, I'm guessing that you're probably as tired of the 2008 Presidential race as I am. Too bad there are still nearly three months of this nonsense to go, and, although John McCain has gone deep into the stupid with ads featuring comparisons of his opponent with Paris Hilton, even Barack Obama doesn't seem entirely immune from attacks of pandering himself, proposing as he has, to eliminate income taxes on seniors. Of course, this being August, and all, the slowest news month of the year, coupled with the--heh--traditional wisdom that no one really pays attention to the…
oracknows | August 12, 2008I am commanded by my Benevolent Overlords, and I answer.
Seed Media Group, (the aforementioned Benevolent Overlords) are taking a reader survey. To encourage (i.e. bribe) you to participate, they're holding a drawing among those who actually respond to the survey, with the prizes being a lot of great Apple stuff, including an iPhone 3G, a MacBook Air and a 40GB Apple TV. The good news is that at the moment not too many people have responded. That raises your odds for winning the Apple stuff.
Go forth and tell our Overlords what you think.
oracknows | August 12, 2008It's been a long time, been a long time,
Been a long lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely time.
- Led Zeppelin
Not nearly long enough.
- Orac
Some rats never die, it would appear.
You may recall last year, when I spend a considerable amount of verbiage writing about a promising cancer drug called dichloroacetate (DCA). There were many reasons. One reason was that the drug was being represented as a "cure" for cancer that big pharma wouldn't fund because it was outside of its patent. There was also plenty of fascinating cancer biology there to…
oracknows | August 11, 2008Look what Bora's doing with poor Professor Steve Steve:
And what's poor Charles Darwin got to do with it? No wonder Jason's looking on in bemusement--or perhaps puzzlement.
oracknows | August 11, 2008Seen and photographed on E. 44th St., about a block or two from the United Nations building:
Acupuncture, energy balancing, this guy's got it all--because nothing's too good for our diplomats.
oracknows | August 11, 2008Seen in a bookstore in the Delta terminal at LaGuardia:
It makes perfect sense. What's left after fleecing millions of gullible readers selling books about "alternative" medicine and secret cures "they" don't want you to know about? Fleecing millions of gullible readers by selling books rife financial scams, of course. (I wonder how many pyramid schemes--excuse me, multilevel marketing investment opportunites"--are within this new book.) Of course, Kevin Trudeau definitely knows about financial scams. After all, he did spend time in jail for swindling banks and another for bilking his…
oracknows | August 11, 2008While I was away over the weekend, a reader made me aware of a new development in the world of "alternative"--excuse me, "complementary and alternative"--medicine (a.k.a. CAM). I suppose I should have seen this coming. In retrospect, given the proliferation of wikis of seemingly every shape and for seemingly every purpose, it was inevitable that someone, somewhere would put together a wiki for CAM, known as the Wiki4CAM: Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) Encyclopedia.
My first thought was that maybe I should register. Certainly I could edit some articles, although, despite what…
oracknows | August 9, 2008...that I and a bunch of other ScienceBloggers will be at the following location from 2-4 PM today:
Details:
2pm-4pm on Saturday, August 9
Social
795 8th Ave (close to 49th St.)
New York, NY 10019
A couple of warnings:
Point one:
I'm a lot more boring and unassuming in person than I am on the blog. Really. Just ask my family and friends. As PZ would say, I don't breath fire or eviscerate alt-med mavens. If you're expecting the same level of scintillating (or not-so-scintillating) wit seen here, you're likely to be disappointed. Fortunately, my fellow ScienceBloggers will more than take up the…
oracknows | August 8, 2008It's that time again. The longer I'm at this, the faster time seems to fly, but it's already here again. Yes, the next meeting of the Skeptics' Circle is scheduled to land at City of Skeptics in less than a week, on Thursday, August 14. If you're a skeptical blogger, get cracking and submit your work. Help make this carnival yet another must-read event, as so many of our past Circles have been.
And, of course, if you want to host (and I urge you to host because not only is hosting doing your part for skepticism but it's a lot of fun too), peruse the schedule and archives, as well as the…
oracknows | August 8, 2008"If you're not a liberal at 20, you have no heart. And if you're not a conservative at 40, you have no head." - Winston Churchill
Like one of my blog buds, PalMD, I usually don't discuss purely political issues on this blog. After all, I have my niche, and I've become quite good at blogging within that niche, if I do say so myself. Also, let's face it: Political bloggers are a dime a dozen, by and large, while few do what I do, and I like it that way. Still, sometimes something happens that makes it impossible for me to help myself and I can't resist. After all, anyone who blogs fancies…
oracknows | August 7, 2008This is disturbing.
No, it's not disturbing because it's a story potentially about autism. It's not even disturbing because it indicates that Jenny McCarthy might soon have some competition in the brain dead antivaccinationist autism mom competition. It's disturbing because of who Jenny's new competition might be:
Britney has a whole new problem on her hands to deal with. According to In Touch, she fears that her youngest son Jayden James may be autistic.
Family friends say he often seems to be off in his own little world, playing by himself, and he starts crying for no reason.
Britney and…
oracknows | August 7, 2008...to ask über-quack Hulda Clark, the woman who disagrees with Dr. Simoncini in that she thinks that all cancer is caused by an intestinal fluke and that she can cure it by "zapping" it with a chintzy device she calls a "Zapper" that looks a lot like a Scientology E-meter, any question you want. She's going to be broadcasting her quackery all over the intertubes tonight on Patrick Timpone's One Radio Network at 7 PM CDT:
Thursday, August 7, 7-8 PM Talk to the Legendary Dr. Hulda Clark
Dr. Clark has a clinic in Mexico and claims a high success rate with Cancer patients and uses the word "…
oracknows | August 7, 2008I don't much like Mike Adams of NaturalNews.com (formerly NewsTarget.com). Indeed, I haven't yet been able to find a more blatant purveyor of the worst kind of quackery and paranoid anti-physician and anti-medicine conspiracy theories anywhere on the Internet, with the possible exception of Whale.to. However, Whale.to is so utterly, outrageously, incoherently full of not just quackery but paranoid New World Order conspiracy theories and other paranormal silliness that any but the most deluded can easily see it for what it is with just a cursory reading of a few of its many, many pages. It's…
oracknows | August 6, 2008A couple of days ago, I did a Respectfully Insolent⢠takedown of a disappointingly credulous and misinformation-laden article published on Medscape about the human papilloma virus vaccine Gardasil. The article was clearly biased, and, worse, it quoted Oprah's favorite woo-loving gynecologist Dr. Christiane Northrup parroting germ theory denialism and the myth that Louis Pasteur "recanted" on his deathbed. All in all, it was a terrible article.
Today, multiple people have pointed out to me and I have seen at the blog Holford Watch that the link to the Medscape article now leads to a "page…
oracknows | August 6, 2008Shot with my iPhone camera Friday at our campus bookstore:
Although I'm sure this was meant ironically (although one can never be sure), somehow I don't think that linking Al Gore with Jesus is a particularly good idea. Climate change "skeptics" already focus on Al Gore as though discrediting him somehow discredits behind science of anthropogenic climate change. Of course, Al Gore isn't a scientist. He is a popularizer and a politician; so even if his credibility were utterly destroyed it would have nothing to do with the validity of global climate science.
It's the same with other types…
oracknows | August 5, 2008Remember how I mentioned that the venue for the ScienceBlogs Readers Meetup was going to be changed? Well, the new venue has been announced:
The new spot will be at a bar on the west side called Social. Seed has reserved a room in the back, and it's three floors in case we need even more room. Seed will buy the first round of pitchers (alcs and non-alcs).
Details:
2pm-4pm on Saturday, August 9
Social
795 8th Ave (close to 49th St.)
New York, NY 10019
Be there, Aloha.
oracknows | August 5, 2008Bizarrely enough, Suzanne Somers has been a common topic of discussion on this blog since the very beginning. Indeed, in one of my earliest substantive posts, way back in December 2004 when I had just started this blog on Blogger, I used her as an example of how misleading breast cancer testimonials can be. At the time, I only knew Somers as a breast cancer survivor who had decided to turn to "alternative" therapy. What she really meant was that she had undergone surgery and radiation but had decided not to undergo chemotherapy, opting instead for mistletoe extract
I also explained at the…
oracknows | August 5, 2008Yesterday, there was a press release announcing the "Vaccinate Your Baby" campaign being promoted by the American Academy of Pediatrics and Every Child by Two. This morning in New York, there will be a press conference to unveil the initiative, described thusly:
Every Child By Two (ECBT) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) are launching a new campaign with actor Amanda Peet to urge parents to immunize their babies from vaccine-preventable diseases. This new initiative will address misinformation about vaccines that causes confusion among parents and puts children at risk. These myths…