Wow. I just saw something that utterly stunned me over at that house organ of the mercury militia and antivaccinationists everywhere Age of Autism. It's an example of hypocrisy so blatant that it stuns even me, someone who's been following the whole pseudoscientific "vaccines cause autism" movement for over three years now. It started with this headline: DR. OFFIT'S CONFLICT OF INTEREST SHOULD DISALLOW HIM FROM COMMENTING Then, when The Probe quite reasonably points out in the comments: Kim, since you are so concerned about conflicts of interest that you are willing to deny Dr. Offitt his…

"Detoxification." Whenever I hear that term, I'm at least 90% certain that I'm dealing with seriously unscientific woo. The reason should be obvious to longtime readers of this blog or to anyone who has followed "alternative medicine" for a while, because "detoxification" is a mainstay of "alternative" treatments and quackery for such a wide variety of diseases and conditions. Of course, toxins are indeed a bad thing, and we close-minded reductionist "allopathic" physicians do indeed use detoxification when appropriate. What differentiates us from "alternative" medicine practitioners is that…

A while back I complained about an installation misadventure I had when I got Comcast service hooked up to my new abode. Since the misadventure was corrected, things have been generally OK, except that for a while Comcast's digital voice phone service produced an annoying buzz for a couple of weeks that made it almost unusable and that no amount of rebooting the modem would fix. Just as I was about to call customer service, the buzz spontaneously disappeared, and since then things have been more or less acceptable. In my area, at least, as far as I can tell BitTorrent traffic hasn't been…

The ignorance and stupidity, they burn: Why, yes, actually, we did "allow" Nazi Germany to host the Olympics back in 1936. Hitler even presided over some of the ceremonies. The sign is so wrong that at first I wondered whether it was a Photoshop job, but apparently it's legit. I realize this photo is from around three week ago, but I didn't see it until Ed pointed me to it yesterday. Given my interest in World War II history and the Holocaust, you just knew I couldn't resist it once made aware of it. True, it's not as hilariously dumb as Tony Zirkle, but it does reveal a shocking level of…

...more outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases like pertussis: Erik Ferry thought little of the sniffles and cough his 12-year-old daughter came down with in February. But the coughs became more frequent and violent, and the bug hung on for days, then weeks. Concerned it was more than just a cold, Ferry took his daughter to the doctor, and a dose of antibiotics cleared things up. Only later did he learn that several of the girl's classmates at the East Bay Waldorf School in El Sobrante had the same symptoms. And it was only this month that Ferry, who lives in Berkeley, learned that a bout…

...or so sayeth, well...YOU ARE DUMB. Bryan may be a little late in piling on, but better late than never. Zirkle, as you may recall, was the hapless candidate for the Republican nomination to run for a Congressional seat in northwest Indiana who accepted an invitation to speak at a celebration of Hitler's 119th birthday by the American Nazi Party--excuse me, the American National Socialist Workers' Party--as I joked about a couple of weeks ago. Apparently, though, I didn't give Zirkle all the credit he is due. I just made fun of his cluelessness about giving a speech on Hitler's birthday…

Last week's woo was pretty darned hard to top, don't you think? It had it all, after all: Boner potentiation, penis enlargement, magnets, near infrared, and more. The only thing it lacked that would have made it absolutely perfect woo were references to pseudoscientific "vibration" or, even better, quantum theory. That's the reason I could only give it a 9.5/10 rather than a perfect score of 10/10. All I can say is: Better luck next time. In looking for something that could at least live up to last week, if not surpass it, I was surprised that there actually was such a link in my ever-…

Sometimes being a skeptic can be a real bitch. And no one knows that better than the host of the latest installment of a blog carnival that has, believe it or not, been running over three years now, the ever-popular Skepbitch. She's served up a heaping helping of the best skeptical bitching from the last two weeks. Head on over and enjoy! Next up to host is Action Skeptics on May 22. If you're a blogger, start getting your best skeptical posts ready to submit for the next Skeptics' Circle. Finally, as always, if you're interested in hosting, check out the schedule and guidelines, as well as…

Although there are a lot of medical bloggers out there, there's always room for more good blogging, particularly if it's related to basic and translational research. That's why the Cancer Research UK Science Update blog is worth checking out. It's actually been around a while as an internal blog, but now it's "gone public," so to speak, allowing readers to check out its older posts. I encourage my readers to take a look.

In science- and evidence-based medicine, the evaluation of surgical procedures represents a unique challenge that is qualitatively different from the challenges in medical specialties. Perhaps the most daunting of these challenges is that it is often either logistically impossible or unethical to do the gold-standard clinical trial, a double-blind, randomized placebo trial, to test the efficacy of an operation. After all, the "placebo" in a surgical trial involves exposing patients to anaesthesia, making an incision or incisions like the ones used for the operation under study, and then…

...and suddenly he reveals his true stripes. Oh, well, at least the Hitler Zombie hasn't eaten Jason's brain, as he has so many of the others who complain about being Expelled! Yet. Thanks, Jason. I needed the laugh after the events of yesterday and today. Oh, and congratulations on getting tenure!

...because Dr. Roy Kerry, the negligent physician who killed an autistic child with chelation therapy and against whom criminal charges were dropped yesterday, wants to go back to work: Dr. Roy Kerry, 70, of Sharpsville, read from a prepared statement today at the Butler offices of his attorney, Al Lindsay, but would not answer questions on the advice of his other lawyers. Kerry still faces a civil suit over the death of Abubaker Tariq Nadama, and a hearing on the future of his medical license. "I plan to continue my life's work helping many patients with serious illnesses with the highest…

Longtime readers of this blog probably remember the tragic case of Abubakar Tariq Nadama, the five-year-old autistic boy who died as a result of being treated with chelation therapy three years ago by Dr. Roy Kerry, an otolaryngologist who had apparently had given up doing head and neck surgery in favor of the more lucrative pastures of woo. This case was about as clear as a case could get. A known potential complication of chelation therapy is a lowering of calcium levels in the blood, to the point that cardiac arrhythmias and cardiac arrest can occur. Moreover, children are more sensitive…

Too bad this woman forgot a cardinal rule about making signs boosting English as the official language of the U.S.: Sorry, I saw this picture and just couldn't resist... Hat tip, though, to Orcinus, who reminded me of this other example of a protester who could use a little remedial English: Now why on earth would he be so mean to poor Larry and his family? I may not always agree with him (an understatement), but Larry's a smart guy. Besides, Canada is not our enemy. Note to self: The next time I call someone anything derogatory, make sure to spell the derogatory term correctly.

Since I'm almost never home in time to see the 6:30 PM news, it's unlikely I'll be seeing this series on NBC news about the "mind-body" connection when it airs, although I'll search for video later when I get a chance. Apparently I missed this last night: When we were planning this week's series "the Mind Body Connection," Alex Wallace the executive producer of Nightly News asked me what was new with the alternative medicine movement, which has been in full swing for more than a decade. The answer is that a handful of billionaires have brought alternative medicine into many the nation's major…

I've lamented time and time again just how much money the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) wastes on basic research and clinical trials of modalities that are, from a scientific viewpoint, so highly implausible that the chances of finding a clinically useful or relevant--or even a consistent statistically significant--effect (for example, homeopathy or reiki) or on therapies for which there is already abundant negative evidence (chelation therapy, for example) are vanishingly small. In this fifth year of a flat or declining NIH budget and of scientists facing…

OK, I know it's like the post calling the kettle black, but what the heck is PalMD doing blogging on vacation? And are his two most recent posts so good? This is what I mean: Why hospice matters Never say "hopeless" I recently had the unfortunate opportunity to visit a relative in hospice. I was incredibly impressed. Nice, well-appointed rooms, with a caring, attentive staff that did everything in its power to keep the dying as comfortable and free of distress, both physical and emotional, as humans can do. As a cancer surgeon, I've been involved with a number of patients who went to…

That's the message that Ben Stein has been pushing lately, namely not just the hated "Darwinism" but science itself inevitably leads to political philosophies such as Nazi-ism and Stalinism (but especially Nazi-ism, given its emphasis on racial hygiene and eugenics), including the mass murder that resulted from them. As a result, Stein has been correctly and deservedly excoriated not just by science bloggers, but even by fellow conservatives such as Instapundit, who characterized Stein as "totally having lost it," and John Derbyshire, who correctly characterized Stein's lies as a blood libel…

Forgive me if you find bloggers trumpeting their traffic numbers to be painfully boring. Truth be told, sometimes I find them boring too. However, I hope you'll indulge me just this once, given that regular readers know how rarely I do posts dedicated to discussing my traffic. (Just remember that blogging is an exercise in ego gratification, anyway.) It's just that March and April have been the best two months ever in terms of traffic on this blog, and I can't resist taking a moment to post about it. Just take a look: In March, there were 128,996 visits to Respectful Insolence, and in…

Time's flying by once again. You know, the longer I serve as the organizer of this great endeavor that I did not start, namely The Skeptics' Circle, the more it amazes me just how good it routinely is. It also amazes me just how fast time flies between editions. This time around is no exception. Already, the next edition is due in a mere four days, on May 8, 2008. This time around, the host will be The Skepbitch. Besides having an utterly awesome name for her blog, the Skepbitch is--well--a skeptic. In fact, so dedicated is she that she was willing to subject herself to a lecture by Sylvia…