oracknows | July 25, 2008I'm very puzzled.
Now, I know that my being puzzled isn't particularly unusual. I'm frequently puzzled. I can't figure out how, for example, anyone with the slightest bit of reasoning ability can do anything other than laugh when informed what homeopathy is and how it supposedly "works." I can't figure out why American Idol or Survivor is so amazingly popular.
And I can't figure out why the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Center released this warning about cell phones:
PITTSBURGH July 24, 2008, 07:13 am ET · The head of a prominent cancer research institute issued an unprecedented warning to…
oracknows | July 24, 2008You know, it really annoys me when I see idiocy as idiotic as the idiocy of this surgeon in New Jersey:
In a lawsuit filed yesterday, a Camden County woman accused her orthopedic surgeon of "rubbing a temporary tattoo of a red rose" on her belly while she was under anesthesia.
The patient discovered the tattoo below the panty line the next morning, when her husband was helping her get dressed to go home after the operation for a herniated disc, her attorney, Gregg A. Shivers, said in a phone interview yesterday.
"She was extremely emotionally upset by it," said Shivers. The suit, filed on…
oracknows | July 24, 2008
Regular readers of this blog know that I'm an Apple geek. The Macintosh is my preferred axe and has been, with few interruptions, since the late 1980s. Indeed, the only time I've used anything other than a Mac is when I've had no choice. The first time I saw one was in 1984, not long after the original Mac was released. My roommate somehow managed to come up with the money to buy one through the University of Michigan towards the end of my senior year. I really liked it right from the start but only got to play with it occasionally for a few months. After I graduated, I didn't even own a…
oracknows | July 23, 2008Enough with Radovan Karadzic, already!
I know schadenfreude can be a fun thing. I've even indulged in it myself from time to time. I also know that Radovan Karadzic was a very, very bad man who engaged in ethnic cleansing and genocide in the Balkans wars of the early and mid-1990s. My interest in the Holocaust and Holocaust denial makes it hard not to see the parallels between Karadzic and what Hitler wanted to do.
So, wonder all the people who have forwarded me links to stories revealing that Karadzic had been practicing alternative medicine while he was on the lam all these years, why have…
oracknows | July 23, 2008I'm envious of Steve Novella. Well, just a little, anyway. The reason is that he's somehow managed to annoy David Kirby and the anti-vaccine contingent enough to provoke what appears to be a coordinated response to his debunking of anti-vaccine propaganda. For that alone he deserves some serious props.
You may have wondered why I haven't written much about Amanda Peet giving an interview in which she pointed out that she had looked into the matter and had found no reason to believe that vaccines caused autism or were unsafe. In the same interview, she referred to parents who don't vaccinate…
oracknows | July 22, 2008It's summertime, and the living is easy...well, not quite. It's been a hectic and depressing summer so far. However, I am going to be able to allow myself one weekend away from the drudgery of grant writing. You see, our Seed overlords are repeating the infamous blogger meetup that happened last year in August. Because they lack imagination (and because it's the time when the largest number of us can make it), they plan on doing it in August again this year. It also turns out that they want to put together some sort of "meet the bloggers" event--in someplace air-conditioned, of course, but to…
oracknows | July 22, 2008I've gone on record as saying more times than I care to remember that there is no such thing as "alternative" medicine. There is only medicine. Indeed, the only reason any medicine is considered "alternative" is (1) it is on a scientific basis incredibly improbable and/or it comes from a pre-scientific "healing" tradition; (2) its efficacy is unproven in scientific studies and clinical trials; (3) its efficacy has been tested in randomized clinical trials and found wanting; or (4) a combination of (1) plus one or more of the other three. Of course, one argument that I have made before is that…
oracknows | July 21, 2008...professional wrestling!
You know, it seems eerily appropriate. Generation Rescue always struck me as being akin to pro wrestling anyway, especially its founder J. B. Handley. His antics in the service of the scientifically discredited notion that mercury in vaccines cause autism (or, these days, that it's vaccines that cause autism) always struck me as being largely for show more than anything else, and certainly his trademark bluster is very much like that of a pro wrestler taunting his opponents.
Generation Rescue apparently gets the celebrities it deserves.
I also have to wonder if this…
oracknows | July 21, 2008In the celebrity vaccine wars, as we all know, Jenny McCarthy has become the de facto leader of the "vaccines-cause-autism" lunatic fringe. However, apparently she has managed to recruit another celebrity to help her out. Her choice is amazingly appropriate: Britney Spears, who was seen at a fundraiser for "Jenny McCarthy's autism charity Generation Rescue."
Because no one knows parenting and science like Britney Spears, I guess.
On the other hand, I have to wonder what J. B. Handley, founder of GR, thinks of having the Hollywood press refer to his baby as "Jenny McCarthy's autism charity"?…
oracknows | July 21, 2008Well, I won't back down
No, I won't back down
You can stand me up at the gates of hell
But I won't back down
Gonna stand my ground
Won't be turned around
And I'll keep this world from draggin' me down
Gonna stand my ground
And I won't back down
From I Won't Back Down by Tom Petty, 1989
On Friday, I wrote a rather long post about the whole issue of "framing" science and the issue of anti-vaccine activism. In essence, I tweaked Matt Nisbett and Chris Mooney to give those of us in the trenches fighting the antiscientific belief that drives antivaccinationism some tools, some "frames," to use to…
oracknows | July 19, 2008I suppose I had better get ready for another e-mail with a wounded, puppy-dog, plaintive complaint of "I'm not really anti-vaccine" in it. You see, that's what has happened in the past a couple of times after I wrote about that pediatrician to the children of the stars (in particular Jenny McCarthy's child) and ubiquitous go-to pediatrician whenever the media wants to hear some "skepticism" about the safety of vaccines, Dr. Jay Gordon. Clearly, it really, really bothers him when someone refers to him as being "anti-vaccine," but what other term fits him so well these days? After all, Dr.…
oracknows | July 18, 2008Three days ago, ScienceBlogs did something it hasn't done before. ScienceBloggers were given screener DVDs of a new movie by one of our own, Randy Olson of Shifting Baselines. The movie was Sizzle: A Global Warming Comedy, and the idea was to get as many of us as possible to review the movie and post our reviews on the same day. The reviews were pretty mixed, ranging from panning the movie to really, really liking it, with the majority from my reading tending towards negative.
Of course, as regular readers know, life intervened for me in a truly depressing way, which is why I was not part of…
oracknows | July 17, 2008It's that time again, time for yet another foray in to the best skeptical writing the blogosphere has served up over the last two weeks, this time hosted by Sam Wise over at Sorting Out Science, who has collected it all for you in one convenient location known as the 91st Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle. You can't go wrong checking it out.
Next up is The Lay Scientist, who's set to host the 92nd Meeting on July 31. In fact, he's already issued a call for entries. So start gearing up to send him your best work less than a fortnight hence. In the meantime, if you're interested in hosting a…
oracknows | July 17, 2008Oh, no.
I don't know how they got it. I don't know where they got it. But somehow, they got it. Somehow, those advocates of the idea that mercury in vaccines causes autism have gotten a hold of the white paper telling how big pharma fooled everyone about the real mercury content of vaccines!
It's a veritable smoking gun! How could our Big Pharma and CDC paymasters have allowed this to happen? Even worse, our plans for using D2O to stabilize vaccines have been exposed! Someone will pay for this. The super-secret vaccine police are now questioning every operative, threatening to pump them up…
oracknows | July 16, 2008One of the great "myths" of the mercury militia, that movement that insists no matter what the actual scientific evidence shows that it absolutely, positively has to be mercury from vaccines that cause autism is the Myth of the Poor Excretor. In other words, the claim is that autistic children are somehow "poor excretors" of mercury, thus making the mercury that used to be in vaccines more toxic to them so that it gave them autism. One of the key pieces of evidence cited to counter this myth is a study by Ip et al (2004) that failed to find any correlation between hair and blood mercury…
oracknows | July 16, 2008I was contemplating how to get back into the swing of things as far as getting the blogging juices flowing again after the unfortunate events of the last few days, given how much my last post drained me. I suppose I could have dived into the infamous PZ versus the cracker incident, but, quite frankly, the utter ridiculousness and childishness of the whole affair bored and disgusted me too much, although I don't rule out a brief post about it later today or tomorrow (that is, if anyone even still cares). If I do, I guarantee that my take on the whole kerfluffle will make no one happy, but it…
oracknows | July 14, 2008Prelude: Sunday, June 22, 2008
Only three weeks ago. All seems well.
Prelude II: Thursday, July 3, 2008
We learn that all is not well.
Saturday, July 12, 2008, 6:30 AM
He spoke through tears of 15 years how his dog and him
traveled about
The dog up and died, he up and died
And after 20 years he still grieves.
(From Mr. Bojangles by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, 1970)
It is early Saturday morning, and I can no longer sleep. Preternaturally quiet, a shroud of silence blankets the house, oppressive, dark, and hateful. There aren't even any birds chirping, and puzzlingly I have yet to hear the…
oracknows | July 12, 2008Don't forget, everyone, the 91st Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle is fast approaching and due to land at Sorting Out Science on Thursday, July 17. Check out the guidelines for what we're looking for and get your bst skeptical stuff ready to submit before the deadline. The contact information and deadline for this particular installment are listed here.
In the meantime, I've tentatively decided to take the organizer's prerogative and to host the 100th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle myself in November. If life gets crazy, and I change my mind, I'll let you know. If you still want to host, know…
oracknows | July 11, 2008The other day, I sarcastically "thanked" Andrew Wakefield for his role in making sure that measles is again endemic in the U.K. At the same time I wondered whether in 5 to 10 years I'd be similarly "thanking" Jenny McCarthy for her role in doing the same thing here in the United States.
It looks as though I won't have to wait five years:
At least 127 people in 15 states have come down with the measles, the biggest outbreak in the United States in more than 10 years, Reuters reported.
Cases started springing up in May, when more than 70 people in a dozen states became ill. According to federal…
oracknows | July 11, 2008I'd start out by saying that here's another one for my (in)famous Academic Woo Aggregator, except that this institution is already a part of the Woo Aggregator. The only thing I can say is that Steve Novella (who's from Yale and has had to manage an influx of woo at his home institution) might get to feel a bit of schadenfreude over this, because the institution in question is Harvard University.
And boy is this a doozy. In fact, it's a $6,500 dose of continuing medical education doozy! Check out Structural Acupuncture for Physicians:
Date: 10/2/2008 -- 6/7/2009
Course #: 00292317
Areas of…