oracknows | January 7, 2008Something must be wrong these days with the Chicago Tribune. I've complained about its recent tendency to publish credulous tripe about "alternative" medicine or sympathetic articles about alternative medicine, usually in the form of columns by the ever woo-friendly Julie Deardorff, but also in the form of a truly dumb (at least about medicine) columnist by the name of Dennis Byrne, who promotes bad science claiming links between abortion or birth control and breast cancer. Clearly, in the more than eight years since I lived in Chicago, things have gone downhill at the old Tribune.
This week…
oracknows | January 7, 2008Pity the investigators at the CDC studying whether thimerosal, the mercury-containing preservative pilloried by the antivaccination movement as the cause of autism and everything that is evil in medicine. Three months ago, they published a high profile article in the New England Journal of Medicine entitled Early Thimerosal Exposure and Neuropsychological Outcomes at 7 to 10 Years, which, as had so many large studies before it, failed to find any correlation between thimerosal-containing vaccines (TCVs) and neuropsychological problems in children. True, it didn't specifically look at autism (…
oracknows | January 6, 2008Here's part 1.
Here's part II. It's Bill Maher on David Letterman ranting about "toxins," how we are being "poisoned by America," and how your body is trying to produce a "river of mucus" to rid itself of the toxins, all standard tropes of "alternative" medicine and quackery. Sadly, David Letterman seems to buy right into the whole rant, more or less.
Maher's mindless parroting of the vague claims of quacks who think that "detoxification" is the cure for every ill, combined with his being an antivaccination wingnut and a germ theory denialist, are just three reasons why, whenever I see anyone…
oracknows | January 6, 2008Charlie Anders seeks to answer that very question:
(Click on the graph above to go to the full size original graph, which graphs the frequency of stories per season in which the Doctor is portrayed as overthrowing the government or the status quo or foments a rebellion.)
Although the arch-conservatism of the John Pertwee-era Doctor (which continued into the early part of the Tom Baker-era Doctor) is not that surprising (at the time the Doctor did work for the quasi-military U.N.I.T. as its science advisor, after all), who'd have thought that the Sylvester McCoy would be the Che Guevara of…
oracknows | January 5, 2008"It's a miracle!"
How many times have you heard that one, usually invoked when someone survives serious injuries that would kill most people? Personally, the use of the word grates on me and did even when I was a lot more religious than I am now. Yesterday, it grated on me when I saw this story:
NEW YORK -- Alcides Moreno should be dead.
But Moreno, a 37-year-old window washer from Linden, not only survived a 47-story fall from a Manhattan skyscraper, but will likely walk again and make a near 100 percent recovery, doctors said yesterday.
"If we can talk about medical miracles, this…
oracknows | January 4, 2008After having to put up with high profile antivaccinationist idiots like Jenny McCarthy and celebrities who are ignorant enough to fall for what the mercury militia are laying down, like Donald Trump, it's nice to see that not all celebrities are twits when it comes to vaccines.
Not surprisingly, first in line to attack is Byron Richards, writing for über-crank Mike Adams' Newstarget. Of course, seeing any one writing for Adams call anyone "gullible," given that in his attack Richards parrots the same lie that Bill Maher did, namely that flu vaccines contribute to the development of Alzheimer…
oracknows | January 4, 2008
Vibrations.
After a year and a half of doing Your Friday Dose of Woo every week with only a couple of breaks, it's all I can feel or hear sometimes.
Vibrations.
What is it about woo and "vibrations," "harmonics," or "waves," anyway? It doesn't matter if it's sound waves or electromagnetic waves. Somehow the denizens of Woo World seem to think that vibrations have special powers beyond what physicists tell us that they have, such as the ability to transmit energy. Hardly a week goes by, it seems, when I don't encounter claims by woo-meisters such as being able to "raise cellular vibration"…
oracknows | January 3, 2008It's 2008. Unfortunately, there don't appear to be any signs that the problems of 2007 as far as rampant credulity and susceptibility to quackery and pseudoscience on the part of the public will be abating this year. Fortunately, we have a remedy--or at least something that can help show you how to examine these outlandish claims from a critical and scientific perspective. Yes, it's the very first Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle of 2008, and it's over at White Coat Underground right now. Appropriately enough, the setting is a primary care office in Anytown, USA, and the patients are...well,…
oracknows | January 3, 2008The other day, I happened across an Op-Ed article in the New York Times that left me scratching my head at the seeming insanity of the incident it described. The article, written by Dr. Atul Gawande, author of Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science and Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance, described what seemed on the surface to be an unbelievable travesty:
In Bethesda, MD, in a squat building off a suburban parkway, sits a small federal agency called the Office for Human Research Protections. Its aim is to protect people. But lately you have to wonder. Consider this…
oracknows | January 2, 2008...and he gets it right here.
If only someone with some sanity could actually sit down with Trump, as portrayed in the post above.
oracknows | January 2, 2008Any Oklahoma City skeptics out there reading this?
I just found an event that could use the presence of some actual science-minded individuals to refute the nonsense that's going to be there. It's an event called Educate Before You Vaccinate, and it's happening on January 19.
Looking at the pamphlet advertising the event, I see the standard antivaccination lies about vaccines causing autism and some really dumb pseudoscientific blather about how a "genetic epidemic" of autism is impossible. The keynote speaker will be April Renée, keynote speaker for Vaccine Injured Children (VIC) and…
oracknows | January 2, 2008If the pontifications of Orac are too--shall we say?--insolent for your taste, you'll be happy to know that there's a new group blog in town designed to provide a serious "alternative" voice of reason and science to discuss the claims made in favor of "alternative" medicine. Spearheaded by Steve Novella, President of the New England Skeptical Society and active blogger at Neurologica Blog, this new effort is called Science-Based Medicine. It's manifesto starts:
Science-Based Medicine is a new daily science blog dedicated to promoting the highest standards and traditions of science in medicine…
oracknows | January 2, 2008Although this may be more up Abel Pharmboy's alley than mine, there was an article in the New York Times yesterday that indirectly demolished one of the favorite claims of advocates of "natural" medicines and cures. Appropriately enough, it appeared in the Business section. It also demonstrated just what a big business finding natural compounds with therapeutic properties.
The story opens with a description of Chris Kilham, ethnobotanist, a man who's searched the world for medicinal plants:
Part David Attenborough, part Indiana Jones, Mr. Kilham, an ethnobotanist from Massachusetts who calls…
oracknows | January 1, 2008Regular readers of this blog may remember that I'm a bit of a music critic wannabe. This pretension began very early in the history of this blog and persisted every year. Usually, sometime around the end of the year or the first day of the new year, I'll compile my list of my favorite CDs of the year. I had planned on doing this for 2007 yesterday, on the last day of the year, but somehow I didn't manage to do it. So, what the heck? Before I get back to the usual medical and scientific topics of this blog tomorrow, I can't resist indulging my college age pretension once again. A word about my…
oracknows | January 1, 2008It's a new year.
Overall, 2007 was a good year for Respectful Insolence. When I first started this whole blogging thing, I had no idea that I'd still be at it three years later. Moreover, I had no idea that I'd still be able to produce posts good enough that people still want to read them. Heck, I even produced a fair amount of work in 2007 that I'm proud of and that compares well with anything I've ever done.
Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of a feature of this blog from the very beginning. Sadly, 2007 was not such a good year for this blog's mascot. It's not really his fault. It's…
oracknows | December 31, 2007Perhaps I spoke too soon when I said that 2007 finished on a good note.
I never would have chosen mercury militia recruit Jenny McCarthy as a "woman who inspires us." Let's see. Just because she decided to make claims that she could "cure" her son of autism and that vaccines caused it does not constitute a reason to be "inspired" by her, unless scientific ignorance inspires you.
oracknows | December 31, 2007What better way to finish off 2007 than to look at a most amusing judicial ruling on the admissibility of some of the favorite "expert" witnesses trotted out to try to demonstrate a link between mercury in vaccines and autism. It was issued on December 21 in the case of Blackwell v. Sigma Aldrich, Inc. et al. (Circuit Court for Baltimore City, Case No. 24-C-04-004829). As you might expect, this is a case in which the plaintiffs claimed that their son's autism was caused by thimerosal-containing vaccines.
Kathleen Seidel, as usual, has the details, but I can't resist grabbing a few tidbits…
oracknows | December 31, 2007Given the way that he's so successfully resurrected Doctor Who, I had come to believe that Russell T. Davies could do no wrong. I guess I was wrong:
The Daily Post is reporting that comments made by Executive Producer Russell T. Davies at the preview screening of Voyage of the Damned have caused quite a stir.
When asked who from history he would like to see play the Doctor, Davies reportedly jokingly answered "Hitler. He was stern and strong. He would be great."
According to the story, some guests laughed, but others were shocked by the remark.
One fan later remarked: "Hitler carried out some…
oracknows | December 30, 2007...from submitting to the Skeptics' Circle!
Our latest host, Pal MD at White Coat Underground, has sent up the emergency flare. With a mere three days to go, he's worried that he won't have enough submissions to his Skeptics' Circle to keep up the usual high quality when the Circle lands on Thursday, January 3.
I realize that the holidays may have put a crimp in your blogging, or maybe all that merriment led you to forget to come up with an entry for the Circle. That's why I'm reminding you all now, before the partying of New Years' Eve gets under way. Make it a New Year's resolution:…
oracknows | December 30, 2007If you think spending the holidays with your family is stressful, imagine what it might be like for the Doctor:
By the way, I've managed to check out the Doctor Who Christmas Special. By and large it's pretty good; maybe I'll post a review sometime in the next few days, while I'm taking it fairly easy for the holidays and not posting as much scientific and medical content as usual...
(Hat tip: Stupid Evil Bastard.)