oracknows | July 10, 2008It's been a week now since my wife and I learned that our beloved dog, whom we've had for eight years, had terminal cancer. At the time I was so sad and down that I just couldn't even imagine getting myself into the appropriately light-hearted frame of mind that I try to maintain. In the week since the shock of learning the diagnosis, I still can't achieve that frame of mind, although, as you may have noticed, I've been able to achieve the level of sarcastic snarkiness directed against pseudoscientists and antivaccinationists that my readers have come to expect. It's easy when you're angry…
oracknows | July 10, 2008While I'm taking some time to rag on TV news for its ludicrously credulous reporting of various "alternative" medicine claims, take a gander at this puff piece on a faith healer.
Where's James Randi when you need him? True, the story mentioned that not one of this faith healer's "healings" could be independently verified with objective information and data, but the rest of the tone of the story is quite credulous.
My answer to ABC News (remember: Steve Wilson works for an ABC affiliate) is this video:
The video speaks for itself. Bentley just kicked a guy with stage IV colon cancer in the…
oracknows | July 10, 2008What is it with the local news media in my hometown?
You might (or might not) remember when I noted back in February that there was one Detroit station that did an unbelievably, hilariously dumb and credulous story about "orbs" in photos and whether they are ghosts or spirits manifesting themselves to their friends and family. That story came courtesy of "reporter" Ama Daetz of the local NBC affiliate WDIV-TV (and I do use the term "reporter" loosely). It was so over-the-top, credulously stupid, so hard to distinguish from an Onion parody, that I even "honored" it with a spot on Your Friday…
oracknows | July 9, 2008Courtesy of antivaccinationist Kool Aid drinker Ginger Taylor, I saw this new term for those who argue against the scientifically dubious proposition that vaccines cause autism, specifically Paul Offit:
Vaccinianity - (Vax.e.an.eh.te) n. The worship of Vaccination. The belief that Vaccine is inherently Good and therefore cannot cause damage. If damage does occur, it is not because Vaccine was bad, but because the injured party was a poor receptacle for the inherently Good Vaccine. (ie. hanna poling was hurt when she came into contact with Vaccine, not because the Vaccine was harmful, but…
oracknows | July 9, 2008I've said it before, and I'll say it again. J.B. Handley, that bull-in-a-china-shop general in the mercury militia who detests me intensely, is about as ignorant as they come when it comes to science and clinical trials. Yesterday, he provided yet more evidence of his cluelessness in his latest piece posted to that repository for all things antivaccine, Age of Autism.
Mr. Handley's all in a lather because the Associate Press published a story yesterday about a proposed NIH-sponsored clinical trial of chelation therapy for autism entitled Fringe autism treatment could get federal study.…
oracknows | July 8, 2008Thanks, Andrew Wakefield.
Thanks for bringing the measles back to the U.K. with your shoddy, litigation- and profit-driven pseudoscience:
Fourteen years after the local transmission of measles was halted in the United Kingdom (UK), the disease has once again become endemic, according to the Health Protection Agency (HPA), the public health body of England and Wales. In an update on measles cases in its weekly bulletin last week, the agency stated that, as a result of almost a decade of low mumps-measles-rubella (MMR) vaccination coverage across the UK, 'the number of children susceptible to…
oracknows | July 8, 2008Having lived in Ohio for eight years and married a woman from the Toledo area, I had come to think that Ohioans had more common sense. I guess I was wrong.
On the other hand, I should have realized that I was wrong. After all, Ohio is home to The Ohio State University Center for Integrative Medicine and the Cleveland Clinic Department of Integrative Medicine. So much for hard-nosed Midwestern skepticism, I guess. My only consolation as a University of Michigan graduate is that Ohio seems to be trying to surpass Michigan for promoting woo in academia. Or it would be were it not that a major…
oracknows | July 7, 2008Given all the heartbreaking stuff that's going on with our dog this week, I'm rather grateful to John Lehrer for pointing me to this uplifting article about the dogs abused by the evil and despicable Michael Vick.
It turns out that that bastard didn't end up leaving all his dogs so vicious that euthanasia is the only option or too vicious to be reclaimed. Through love and hard work, most of the dogs have been saved:
Of the 49 pit bulls animal behavior experts evaluated in the fall, only one was deemed too vicious to warrant saving and was euthanized. (Another was euthanized because it was…
oracknows | July 7, 2008Last week, The New York Times started a rather unusual series in its medical section entitled, The Evidence Gap, described thusly:
Articles in this series will explore medical treatments used despite scant proof they work and will consider steps toward medicine based on evidence.
When I first saw the series, I was prepared for a crapfest. My experience has generally been that when reporters start examining the evidence for and against a treatment they usually do a pretty lousy job. This is most obvious when it comes to "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM), where we are routinely…
oracknows | July 5, 2008Thanks to everyone for your kind comments about the recent bad news about our dog. (Even someone who really detests me because of my position on the vaccine/autism issue was in this instance kind.) I don't know if I'll feel much like blogging for a while; on the other hand, blogging has been therapeutic for me in the past when bad things happen, even if I don't actually write about them. It's always been a good way to take my mind off of badness by concentrating on other badness, such as quackery. Also, Echo has often been my little (OK, well, not so little) black blog buddy, lying nearby or…
oracknows | July 4, 2008
Today is Friday, which has normally meant for the last two years that it's the time every week when I poke fun at some particularly outrageous woo. Indeed. I even had a great idea for a 4th of July-themed post today that (I hope) would have been hilarious. I had even started to write a bit of it a couple of nights ago.
Then real life intervened, and I didn't feel the least bit like humor last night. I still don't feel capable of humor this morning, either. Those of you who don't have pets may want just to skip the rest of this; you may not understand why I'm feeling so down and may view…
oracknows | July 4, 2008Better late than never (for me to announce it, I mean), the 90th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle has descended upon the blogosphere from Down Under, this time brought to you by prominent Australian skeptic and battler against woo, a guy who's even harsher on antivaccinationists than I am, Peter Bowditch.
Go forth and enjoy!
Next up on July 17 is Sorting Out Science. Start getting your best skeptical writing together and join us back here in two weeks for a little summer skepticism. Guidelines for submissions and the schedule can be found here, and if you want to host one of these check out…
oracknows | July 3, 2008I've written time and time again about how antivaccinationists go out of their way to try to reassure us that they really, truly are not "antivaccine" or even that they support vaccination. Of course, such disclaimers are often nothing more than a prelude to a tirade of blatantly antivaccination rhetoric and misinformation about "toxins" in vaccines and the like, and if you try to pin an antivaccinationist down and ask her if there was any evidence that would ever change her mind or persuade her that it's safe to vaccinate, you'll either get a lot of hemming and hawing of the "Green Our…
oracknows | July 3, 2008
One of the main issues that I've written about quite a bit is the issue of what the state should have the power to do when a child has cancer or another life-threatening disease and the parents choose quackery over scientific medicine when the disease is potentially (or even highly) treatable or curable with standard treatment. Most of the time, this has come in the context of patients like Abraham Cherrix, who, with his parents support chose the quackery that is the Hoxsey therapy over chemotherapy, or Katie Wernecke, whose parents chose high dose vitamin C and other woo, over effective…
oracknows | July 2, 2008I've written extensively before about how advocates of non-science-based "medical" treatments, such as naturopathy, homeopathy, and all the woo that follows have been waging a war on all fronts against science- and evidence-based medicine in their effort to have their so-called "complementary and alternative medicine" (or the newer, brighter, shinier name "integrative medicine") be perceived as co-equal with scientific medicine. They've infiltrated academia. They've insinuated their agenda into medical school curricula. They've even managed to have the teaching of woo become a mandatory part…
oracknows | July 2, 2008In the eyes, of anti-vaccine advocates, vaccines bear the brunt of blame for a variety of conditions, including autism, asthma, neurodevelopmental disorders, autoimmune disorders and a wide variety others. Often this link is based on retrospective data, in which parents or patients recall and self-report how many vaccines they've had and which ones. This self-recall is then correlated with the health condition under study, and sometimes correlations are found. However, it's long been known that self-reporting has a tendency to be unreliable, with a tendency to conflate incidents that may or…
oracknows | July 1, 2008(Note Addendum before commenting, please.)
Is there any candidate who still supports the separation of church and state anymore? Heck, even Barack Obama seems to be pandering to the religious base these days:
CHICAGO -- Reaching out to evangelical voters, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is announcing plans to expand President Bush's program steering federal social service dollars to religious groups and -- in a move sure to cause controversy -- support some ability to hire and fire based on faith.
Obama was unveiling his approach to getting religious charities more involved in…
oracknows | July 1, 2008Yesterday, I was depressed. Today I'm a little irritated.
I'm irritated because I came across a study from a couple of weeks ago that's actually a really cool study that applies actual science to the question of how diet and lifestyle changes might alter biology to improve health. It's exactly the sort of study that can apply help understand how diet affects health. It's a study by Dean Ornish, who's widely known for his advocacy of a lifestyle-driven approach to treating atherosclerotic coronary artery disease and producing evidence in the early 1990s that such a lifestyle alteration could…
oracknows | June 30, 2008I realize my post earlier today was a bit of a downer, but what can I say? Lately, there doesn't seem to be much good news on the ever-growing front in the war against quackery. However, in researching that piece I did come across something that made me smile. I found the campaign website for what to me appears to be the perfect embodiment of politics these days, for a leader who represents an exact fit with the mood of the times:
Locutus for President
You will be assimilated!
oracknows | June 30, 2008
"I am Locutus of Borg. Resistance is futile. Your life as it has been is over. From this time forward, you will service us." - Locutus of Borg.
"Strength is irrelevant. Resistance is futile...Your culture will adapt to service ours." -- The Borg.
I'm a bit depressed these days.
Maybe a better term for it would be pessimistic, as I'm not really depressed about the state of my life per se. More precisely, I'm becoming increasingly pessimistic about the state of science- and evidence-based medicine in this country. What brought this pessimism to the forefront was last Thursday's post, which…