oracknows | February 2, 2008Thanks, PZ. Thanks a lot for posting what has to be one of the stupidest, most vile examples of an idiotic religious nut that I've seen in a long time. It was so bad that it has to be seen to be believed:
It hurt my brain just to look at this smug, smarmy twit gloat over his belief that Richard Dawkins (and Heath Ledger, for that matter) are now (in the case of Heath Ledger) or will be (in the case of Richard Dawkins) burning in hell for all eternity. It's guaranteed to raise your blood pressure--unless you're a hateful bigot as well. Thankfully, B-grade horror movie sound effects that…
oracknows | February 2, 2008It's been a while since I've posted any fan mail, but I did get one a few days ago that amused me. It came from someone with a 'nym of "Baxtour". I post it because it represents a common flavor of antivaccinationist response to my blog:
You are a fucking moron, which I'm sure you already know, but if there is one thing you know absolutely nothing about it's thimerosal! You shouldn't even talk about it because you are so fucking clueless!!!
Sincerely,
Someone that actually has a brain
Truly, against such intellectual firepower, even Orac has a hard time standing. My first thought was that it…
oracknows | February 1, 2008...courtesy of fellow ScienceBlogger Jake Young.
Two money quotes:
"First, what is CAM bringing to the table that science and medicine didn't have? Good feelings. Acquaintance with the ways ignorance. Newer, better superstitions. Frankly, you can keep them."
"Science complemented by non-science ceases to be science, and there are no alternatives to the truth."
I may have to steal that last one, perhaps with the addition of a flourish or two of my own. For example, I'd add that science "integrated" with nonscience runs a very high risk of ceasing to be science.
We need more medical students…
oracknows | February 1, 2008Water.
It's the essence of life. Our bodies are mostly made up of it, and we can't live without it for very long. Our cells both contain it and are bathed in it. The enzymatic reactions necessary for life require an aqueous solution to work. Don't think these facts have escaped the woo-meisters, either. Water woo is a a long time favorite of woo-meisters everywhere. Indeed, it began with the "water cure" favored by the ancient Greeks and Romans, who could be forgiven for coming up with it, given that they had very little idea of how human physiology actually worked and at the very least it…
oracknows | January 31, 2008Ack!
The new Skeptic's Circle is here! Yes, the 79th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle has convened over at Podblack Blog, and it's another great collection of skeptical blogging. So why am I disturbed? I just realized that I've utterly failed in my organizer duties in that I totally forgot to submit one of my own posts to the Circle. The shame! Even worse, the Circle's just fine without me; if I hadn't pointed it out I doubt that anyone would have noticed that I hadn't submitted anything.
So why point it out?
Actually, in a way it's a very good thing. It just goes to show that the Skeptics'…
oracknows | January 31, 2008I used to be somewhat of a supporter of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM). I really did. This was back when I was more naïve and idealistic. Indeed, when I first read Wally Sampson's article Why NCCAM should be defunded, I thought it a bit too strident and even rather close-minded. At the time, I thought that the best way to separate the wheat from the chaff was to apply the scientific method to the various "CAM" modalities and let the chips fall where they may.
Unfortunately, two developments have made me sour on NCCAM and develop an opinion more like Dr…
oracknows | January 30, 2008Three and a half months after Kevin Leitch announced that he was shutting down his most excellent blog, Left Brain/Right Brain, it appears that, thankfully, he's changed his mind. Appearing yesterday on the archives of his blog, Kev announced that his blog is open for business again.
Join me in welcoming Kev back to the blogosphere. Head on over and leave a message. It's good to see that he decided not to let bastards like John Best silence him permanently.
oracknows | January 30, 2008Like most people, I have my limits. Actually, I have a pretty high tolerance for tastelessness. It's a necessity in a world like this, where tastelessness increasingly goes beyond the pale. But even I am not above finding something like this so tasteless and offensive that I can only shake my head:
RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - A Carnival float with a pile of model dead bodies commemorating the Holocaust is causing unease before the lavish parades in Rio de Janeiro this weekend.
The Viradouro samba organization, or school, plans to feature the grim display when it marches in the Sambadrome…
oracknows | January 30, 2008A few days ago, I was amused by a term coined by Dr. R.W. The term, "quackademic medicine," was meant to describe the unholy fusion of non-science- and non-evidence-based woo that has infiltrated academic medicine to a disturbing extent over the last decade or two. There was a lot of reaction, mainly positive, to the new term, and I even got an e-mail from a certain skeptical podcaster vowing to use the term every opportunity that he got. One reader, Jim Benton, made a comment that got me to thinking. Here's the comment:
My 'crusade of the year' this year (other than getting a Democratic…
oracknows | January 29, 2008Last week, I did one of my inimitable rants about an ABC television show set to air on Thursday called Eli Stone, in which a lawyer sues a pharmaceutical company for "mercuritol" (an obvious allusion to thimerosal) in vaccines and how it supposedly caused a child's autism. Basically, I called it an irresponsible bit of antivaccination propaganda, given that in the story the jury awards the child $5.2 million, while the lawyer (Eli Stone) is portrayed as a "prophet" crusading for the "little guy."
Now Steve Novella weighs in. In the process, he can't resist doing in his much less--shall we say…
oracknows | January 29, 2008The other day I mentioned the now-infamous magic Alzheimer's helmet, a device being hyped to the press by a group of scientists on the basis of very little data. Believe it or not, of all organizations, ABC News has published an article citing the skeptics' side. It starts:
What if the secret to stopping the progression of Alzheimer's disease -- and perhaps even reversing its ravages -- lay in the use of a special hat?
Too crazy, too goofy, too good to be true, warn experts on the debilitating disease.
Some more:
But Alzheimer's researchers not affiliated with the work say the chances that…
oracknows | January 29, 2008In nondescript dressing room in a nondescript studio in a nondescript office building in in a nondescript industrial park, a short, pudgy 63-year-old man with the stereotypical demeanor of a particularly boring economist was trying to squeeze into a pair of shorts.
"Why oh why did I agree to do this?" he muttered in a whining drone.
He continued to struggle to get into the black shorts, virtually identical to the ones worn by English schoolboys and still worn by Angus Young of AC/DC on stage. Even though Young is over 50, somehow he managed to get into them, and so will I, thought the man.…
oracknows | January 28, 2008Several readers have e-mailed me this story. It's about a device developed in the U.K.. Based on near infrared light (NIR), the device, it is claimed by its creator, will be a major step forward for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease. He even made some very bold claims that it could not just slow the cognitive decline associated with dementia due to Alzheimer's disease but actually reverse it.
Fortunately, a friend over at Science-Based Medicine has taken the time to separate the hype from the scientific basis behind this device. Suffice it to say that, although it's not totally…
oracknows | January 28, 2008Pity poor David Kirby.
Nearly three years ago now, he published his now-infamous Evidence of Harm: Mercury in Vaccines and the Autism Epidemic, A Medical Mystery. Hooking up with the most vocal of the mercury militia, his book blamed mercury in vaccines as the major cause of autism. Unfortunately for Kirby, time has not been kind to him. Although he still manages to retain his rock star status among the antivaccination glitterati, each successive study failing to find a link between thimerosal-containing vaccines (TCVs) and autism put another nail in the coffin of Kirby's relevance, to the…
oracknows | January 27, 2008With all the woo infiltrating hospitals these days, as I've lamented about in constructing my Academic Woo Aggregator, it was only a matter of time until these ways of thinking started to infiltrate other lines of work.
Why not "alternative janitorial services" as well? After reading about it, I wonder how long before it spreads any further. How about "alternative" auto repair? Or even "alternative" plumbing? The possibilities are endless.
oracknows | January 27, 2008This story is a couple of weeks old, but I've only just come across it. It reminds me that there may be some things worse than death, and this is one of them:
To see the face of 32-year-old Huang Chuancai is to witness a rare genetic condition in its most terrible form.
Chinese doctors say Huang, of China's southern Hunan province, suffers from a disease known as neurofibromatosis, a genetic disorder of the nervous system that primarily affects the development and growth of neural cell tissues.
For many of its sufferers, the disease means abnormal growth of these tissues and, as a result,…
oracknows | January 26, 2008I'll give Don Imus credit for one thing. He's predictable and consistent. He never fails to deliver the stupid when it comes to vaccines and autism. True, his wife may take the stupid to hysterically malignant levels when she decides to rant about her belief in the undead myth that mercury in vaccines was a major cause of autism, but he's the calm and reliable voice of vaccine stupidity, spitting out the same antivaccination lies over and over again in that sleep-inducing mumbling drone that he calls a voice. He's only been back on the air for a month and a half now, and it's become…
oracknows | January 25, 2008Winter has settled in well and good around these parts, maybe not as brutal as around P.Z.'s abode but bad enough. So what does one do on a cold, blustery day? If you're a skeptical blogger, you could whip up an example of your best stuff and submit it to the upcoming Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle on Thursday, January 31, this time around hosted at the Podblack Blog. Instructions for submitting and the deadline can be found here. Guidelines for posts can be found here. Then, whether you're a blogger or just a skeptic who appreciates good writing about skepticism, science, and claims that…
oracknows | January 25, 2008
One of the favorite failings in logic and science among the woo-friendly crowd is the ever-famous one of confusing correlation with causation, also known as non causa pro causa, which means "non-cause for the cause." Examples of this are rampant, and include the antivaccinationists who confuse correlation with vaccination and the age at which autism is usually first recognized with vaccines causing autism, taking a homeopathic remedy shortly before having their symptoms resolve spontaneously and mistaking this for the efficacy of the homeopathic remedy, chelating children with autism and…