oracknows | June 1, 2008In the nearly two years of its existence, I have strived to feature only the finest and most outrageous woo that I can find. It's mostly been medical quackery but sometimes it's other topics as well. Oddly enough, the vast majority of the woo featured nearly every week never attracts the attention of any regulatory bodies. Given the hilariously, extravagantly pseudscientific or spiritual claims made to support some of these devices, it's hard to image how so many of them never attract the loving attention of the Food and Drug Administration or the counterpart of the FDA in other countries in…
oracknows | May 31, 2008Ever since it appeared as an "adult" spinoff of Doctor Who, I've had a love-hate relationship with Torchwood. The first season was about as uneven as anything I've ever seen, ranging from a truly execrable (and, even worse, unforgivably stupidly and badly written) "homage" to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Countrycide) that ranks among the worst hours of television to which I've ever subjected myself to a handful of pretty darned good episodes (Out of Time, Captain Jack Harkness), with a whole lot of mediocre episodes in between. This season was generally more consistent, but a lot of problems…
oracknows | May 30, 2008In a couple of hours, I'll be en route to my favorite city in the world, a place where, although I lived there for but a brief three years, I felt completely at home.
Chicago, baby!
Yes, I'm on the way to the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting in Chicago. While there, I'll be checking out the latest and greatest findings from the world of cancer therapy. As any blogger would, I'm hoping not just to learn something but to find interesting blog material.
In the meantime, don't forget that the 88th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle is fast approaching on Thursday, June 5 at…
oracknows | May 30, 2008If there's one thing I've learned over the last couple of years of doing this little feature, it's that there are a couple of kinds of woo. Actually, there are certainly more than a couple, but pretty much all woo can be divided into a couple of types. The first time is where the woo is based on no science at all, but rather mysticism or some other religious or "spiritual" force. This may or may not be combined with the physical or with some sort of scientific or pseudoscientific explanations to justify it, but at its very heart the woo far more religion than science. Then, there's another…
oracknows | May 29, 2008As many who take an interest in this subject know, one of the most common arguments that advocates of various medical woo often make is the appeal to ancient wisdom. They seem to think that if a treatment is old (homeopathy, acupuncture, various "energy healing" methods), there must be something to it because otherwise it wouldn't have persisted. (Never mind that belief in ghosts and evil spirits, for example, has persisted for many thousands of years.)
Here is an explicit description of just what some of this "ancient medical wisdom" is, straight from the horse's mouth, so to speak, namely…
oracknows | May 29, 2008Sometimes I wonder if subjecting myself to all this woo is going to my head. Why do I worry that this might be the case? Recently, I made the mistake of getting involved in an e-mail exchange with a prominent antivaccinationist. Perhaps it was my eternal optimism that led me to do this, my inability to believe that any person in the thrall of pseudoscience, no matter how far gone and how active in harassing anyone who counters him, can't be somehow saved and brought around to understand the value of science and why their previous course was wrong. Such efforts on my part almost inevitably end…
oracknows | May 28, 2008I sometimes wonder if the world is laughing at me.
Let me explain. A while ago I compiled a list of academic medical institutions that--shall we say?--are far more receptive to pseudoscientific and downright unscientific medicine in the form of so-called complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), otherwise known as "integrative medicine." I dubbed this list my Academic Woo Aggregator, and lamented how big it was with much wailing and gnashing of skeptical teeth. Indeed, more than once I have reluctantly concluded that woo is fast becoming the future of American medicine. High up on the…
oracknows | May 27, 2008If there's one thing that quacks and cranks share in common, it's that they do not like scrutiny, particularly by people with some scientific knowledge. Indeed, when confronted with scientists or educated lay people who can challenge their crankery, it's amazing how they react the same way almost every time; they try to silence or--if you will--expel the person who challenges their world view. That's because they want to control their message and operate within the confines of their cozy world, where never is heard a discouraging--and especially never critical--word. Most of all, they never,…
oracknows | May 27, 2008As a physician and scientists who's dedicated his life to the application of science to the development of better medical treatments, I've often wondered how formerly admired scientists and physicians degenerate into out-and-out cranks. I'm talking about people like Peter Duesberg, who was once an admired scientist thought to be on track for a Nobel Prize; that is, until he became fixated on the idea that HIV does not cause AIDS. True, lately he's been trying to resurrect his scientific reputation with his chromosomal aneuploidy hypothesis of cancer, but, alas, true to form he's been doing it…
oracknows | May 26, 2008
Today is once again Memorial Day. On this day in the past I have posted photo montages of, for example, the World War II Memorial in Washington, DC and link roundups, as I did last year. This year, I thought I'd simply post a link to a list maintained by the Department of Veteran Affairs of the number of Americans who have died in every war fought thus far in this nation's history, excluding the current actions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Those figures can be found here.
As we go about our business today, some of us going to cemeteries, others having barbecues, going to baseball games, or…
oracknows | May 25, 2008I figured it was coming, although I didn't think it would come this far before David Kirby's impending visit to the U.K., but I guess that's the fruit of his being invited by a woo-loving Lord to give a briefing at Parliament. This time it comes in the form of an article in the Daily Telegraph entitled MMR: The Debate That Won't Go Away.
David Kirby's there in full force, making up numbers about mitochondrial disorders as he's been doing all along. There are also credulous references to Jenny McCarthy and the "Green Our Vaccines"/"too many too soon" toxin gambit, to the horrible monkey study…
oracknows | May 25, 2008You know, I keep trying to get away from this topic for a while. But, as Michael Corleone said in The Godfather, Part III, "Just when I thought I was out... they pull me back in." I suppose it is unfortunately a measure of the success that antivaccinationists have been having with their public relations effort this year that this stuff keeps popping up everywhere like some mercury- and "toxin"-crazed Whac-A-Mole⢠that I can never seem to stay quiet more than a couple of days on the topic lately. Sometimes I ignore it, even when it's David Kirby. Sometimes I can't.
This time I can't, because…
oracknows | May 25, 2008Epi Wonk has completed part II of her deconstruction of the latest abuse of epidemiology and statistics by those pseudoscientists for the mercury militia, Mark and David Geier. (I commented on part I here):
Pretty steep slopes and, therefore, apparently strong associations. But there's no attempt to control for, or adjust for, the confounding effect of birth cohort. Just one look at Figure 1 (or a basic knowledge about trends in autism) tells you the regression coefficients (slopes) are being driven by increases in autism risk over time. Given the increase in frequency of autism (and other…
oracknows | May 24, 2008Damn Steve Novella.
Well, not really, but I always get annoyed when someone comes up with an analogy or description of a phenomenon that I should have thought of first. I don't really get annoyed at the person who came up with such ideas, but rather at myself for not thinking of something so obvious or precious first. Whether this self-criticism is a symptom of the megalomania or massive ego that I have been accused of having by some of my less--shall we say?--enamored readers or simply a personality quirk, I'll leave to the reader to decide.
Whatever the case, writing for Science-Based…
oracknows | May 24, 2008It's Memorial Day weekend here in the States. For those of us lucky enough not to be on call, working retail, or otherwise being forced to go to work, it means three days away from work. Although I'll be working a bit on various protocols and papers, it nonetheless means three days away from the cancer center. However, even with the work, the lawn work, and the high school graduation party I have to head to, I should still have time to check out Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I had been hoping to go tonight; so I thought I'd solicit opinions from those of you who've…
oracknows | May 23, 2008My British readers, say it ain't so! Hot on the heels of learning that, bankrolled by antivaccinationists, David Kirby is planning a trip to the U.K. in early June, I find out something even more disturbing. A reader forwarded this press release to me:
From: "Clifford G. Miller"
May 23, 2008 -- CONTACT: David Kirby - dkirby@nyc.rr.com
BESTSELLING AMERICAN AUTHOR
DAVID KIRBY TO SPEAK AT HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT
Briefing by Journalist Who Covers Vaccine-Autism Debate is Sponsored
By Lord Robin Granville Hodgson, Baron Hodgson of Shropshire
U.S. Journalist David Kirby, author of the award winning…
oracknows | May 23, 2008I like my Folder of Woo.
Besides providing me endless fodder for this little weekly feature, my Folder of Woo also provides me nearly endless amusement. Sometimes, I'll just peruse it, looking at woo old and new, woo that's been featured in this little weekly exercise in diving into the belly of the beast, woo that has yet to be featured, and woo that will probably never be featured. Unless people suddenly discovery rationality and science, my Folder of Woo is likely to continue to exist. I suppose that could happen, but it's pretty unlikely, which means my Folder of Woo is likely to continue…
oracknows | May 22, 2008There's a new blog in town that I've been meaning to pimp. It's a blog by a retired epidemiologist who got things started looking at the role of diagnostic substitution in autism diagnoses and argued that the autism "epidemic" is an artifact of changing diagnostic criteria.
The blog is Epi Wonk, and it's a good one so far.
This week, I'm really glad Epi Wonk exists. The reason is that somehow, another Geier père et fils crapfest of dumpster-diving has somehow slimed its way into the medical literature, just in time to be used in the Autism Omnibus hearings no doubt. The "study" (if you can…
oracknows | May 22, 2008You know, after over three years of existence and nearly two years that I've been entrusted with the responsibility of organizing it, I thought I had seen pretty much every possible permutation of how the Skeptics' Circle could be hosted. We've had cartoons, soda machines, stories, raucous meetings in pubs, and a whole bunch of other cool ideas, mixed in with some "just the facts, m'am," straight ahead hosting. But there's one permutation we haven't had yet:
A Dirty Limericks edition. Now, thanks to Akusai at Action Skeptics, we do. Even better, it's the usual excellent crop of skeptical…