oracknows | February 1, 2007It's things like this over at Over My Med Body! that show our friend Graham really knows how to make a humble guy like Orac feel the love:
Big name bloggers like Orac and Dr. RW and KevinMD are all up in arms about how "medical schools are going the wrong way" and asking "Does anyone in academic medicine care about the integrity of medical education?" They like to talk about the fluffy "woo" of medical school, as if we're all hippies out in our commune who have sacrilegiously sacrificed our Evidence and Data to a golden cow.
Give. Me. A. Break.
They're whining as if this is the most…
oracknows | January 31, 2007Three announcements about blog carnivals of interest to my readers:
Medical blogging: Grand Rounds, vol. 3, no. 19 has been posted at Envisioning 2.0.
Science blogging: Tangled Bank #72 has been posted at Ouroboros.
Skeptical blogging: The Skeptics' Circle will be appearing tomorrow at Slicing with Occam's Razor. If you're a blogger who writes about critical thinking and the application of the scientific method to everyday life, you still have a few hours to get your entries to Okcam at OkcamsEdge@gmail.com. And, as always, if you're interested in hosting, drop me a line at oracknows@gmail.…
oracknows | January 31, 2007There I was, puttering around the Internet trying to procrastinate while writing yet another grant, when I came across a truly inane article by Scott Adams arguing that the entire universe must be intelligent because processes that lead to products of intelligent (machines, books, etc., made by us) must also be intelligent. (At least I think that's what he was arguing; the argument was so poorly constructed and circular that it was hard to tell. No doubt Adams will retreat to his "I was only joking" or "I was only playing with your mind" defense.) I thought of having a little fun with it, but…
oracknows | January 30, 2007At the risk of irritating a fellow ScienceBlogger again, I thought I'd point out this little post forwarded to me by Norm Jenson as yet another example of exactly the inflated hype for dichloroacetate as a "cure for cancer" that will "never see the light of day" because it has little profit potential (and, by the way, that pharmaceutical companies will "probably lobby against it with all their might") that I was talking about in my original post on the subject.
I should have taken a β-blocker before clicking on the link.
Given the level of silly rhetoric in the post above and even despite…
oracknows | January 30, 2007Via Black Triangle, I'm made aware of another example of religious fundamentalism interfering with sound health care:
A MUSLIM doctors' leader has provoked an outcry by urging British Muslims not to vaccinate their children against diseases such as measles, mumps and rubella because it is "un-Islamic".
Dr Abdul Majid Katme, head of the Islamic Medical Association, is telling Muslims that almost all vaccines contain products derived from animal and human tissue, which make them "haram", or unlawful for Muslims to take.
Islam permits only the consumption of halal products, where the animal has…
oracknows | January 29, 2007Here's just another friendly reminder that the latest edition of the Skeptics' Circle, that now-venerable blog carnival dedicated to critical thinking and skepticism, is due to appear this week on Thursday, February 1 at Slicing with Occam's Razor. (Hmmm, that's mighty close to Groundhog's Day.)
So, if you're a blogger and have written something that would do The Amazing Randi proud, send it to Occam's Edge at OkcamsEdge@gmail.com. And, as always, if you're interested in trying your hand at hosting, drop me a line at oracknows@gmail.com.
oracknows | January 29, 2007The latest Pediatrics Grand Rounds has been posted over at Unintelligent Design: Grand Rounds, Volume 1 Edition 21: What Dreams May Come.
oracknows | January 29, 2007Critics who don't like my insistence on applying the scientific method to the claims of alternative medicine sometimes accuse me of unrelenting hostility towards alternative medicine, as though no amount of evidence would ever convince me of the efficacy of various alternative medicine therapies. Nothing could be further from the truth; I merely insist, as I have from the very beginning, that, at the very least, the claims of alternative medicine should be subject to the same testing by the scientific method that "conventional" or "scientific" medical treatments (a.k.a. evidence-based…
oracknows | January 28, 2007PZ mentioned it, but, after having seen it, I thought I'd give it a plug too, mainly because my readership skews more towards the medical blogosphere than PZ's does, and a new blog this promising should be publicized to other medical bloggers. It's by a graduate student in Biomedical Visualization at the University of Illinois at Chicago and is called Street Anatomy.
As a surgeon, I'm a sucker for a good anatomic illustration and a history lesson, and the blog promises to teach a bit on how the medical illustration biz runs.
oracknows | January 28, 2007I haven't seen a Broadway play in quite a while now, but it may be time for that to change. In the New York Times, I came across an ad for a revival of Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee´s 1955 courtroom drama Inherit the Wind:
This revival of the play stars two great actors, Brian Dennehy as Matthew Harrison Brady and Christopher Plummer as Henry Drummond. For those who aren't familiar with the story, Inherit the Wind is a heavily fictionalized account of the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925, not to mention a great American play. Previews begin March 19, and the play opens on April 12. I think I…
oracknows | January 28, 2007Remember Donnie Davies, the "youth pastor" that I wrote about a couple of days ago, who posted a list of gay bands, plus a homophobic video proclaiming that "God hates a fag" that led to a prolonged debate over whether he was for real or some sort of elaborate Borat-like prank?
Two sources tell me that he's apparently been outed as actor Joey Oglesby:
Thanks to the sleuthing of Dallas JMG reader Bob Stoller, "Pastor Donnie Davies" has been exposed as Dallas-area actor Joey Oglesby (First name corrected from post headline). Here he is. Joey Oglesby recently appeared in a production of Debbie…
oracknows | January 28, 2007Everyone who reads this blog regularly knows my dismay at the infiltration of the curriculum of American medical schools with increasing amounts of non-evidence-based woo. It's even gotten to the point where one medical school (Georgetown University) has is integrating alternative medicine into the mandatory curriculum during all four years, even though these modalities are not based in convincing scientific evidence and therefore are not considered standard of care. Well, this distressing trend just gets more and more disturbing. Now, it seems, you can do a residency or fellowship in "…
oracknows | January 27, 2007I'm reminded by this article that today is the 62nd anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet troops advancing west towards Germany:
OSWIECIM, Poland -- As they do on every anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet troops, witnesses to the Holocaust will gather Saturday -- growing older, frailer and fewer each year. After 62 years, the camp itself is also showing signs of aging under the pressures of tourism and time.
Its new director is searching for ways to preserve vital evidence of Nazi crimes and update the exhibits without chipping away at Auschwitz's authenticity…
oracknows | January 27, 2007I don't know if I'll make this a habit or not, but it's a Saturday, and once again I feel like posting a YouTube or two and dedicating it to one of the "targets" of the week. (Besides, after the last post, I could use something light-hearted, or at least funny.) This one, of course, has to be dedicated to Donnie Davies, the evangelical pastor whose homophobic song The Bible Says, all of which may or may not be a hoax:
And here's another take on this for Donnie to enjoy:
A two-fer: "Gay music" and rampant disrespect for a great American!
Finally, for a take on this great song that should…
oracknows | January 26, 2007I hate to end the week on a downer, but I came across this last night and, given my attention to the case of Katie Wernecke (the girl whose parents chose dubious alternative medical therapy over the radiation therapy she needed for her lymphoma) over the last several months and the recent news that her cancer had returned with a vengeance, it's hard for me not to mention what I've found now, rather than waiting until the weekend or Monday.
First, Katie's father has posted a story written by Katie on the family blog: Hope. It was really hard for me to read this, as it's a heart-wrenching tale…
oracknows | January 26, 2007
After posting about the Donnie Davies, an alleged "youth minister" in Houston who has garnered a lot of attention throughout the blogosphere for his website in which he provides a hilariously off-base list of "gay bands" to avoid and "safe" bands, I was perusing my Folder of Woo, looking for this week's target, but it was hard. After all, whether Donnie is a big hoax or not, whether his atrocious video saying that "homosexuality is a choice" and that "God hates a fag" is meant to be satire or not, he was going to be hard to top. In fact, I don't think I'll even try. However, Donnie did…
oracknows | January 25, 2007Grant season is upon us. Every day that I'm not in the clinic and the O.R., I find myself holed up in my office pounding my head against my monitor trying to write just that perfect mixture of preliminary data, blarney, and grantsmanship to persuade the Powers That Be to give me just a taste of that increasingly precious and scarce elixir of life for my lab, grant money. All I want is just enough to keep my lab going another couple of years and to try to add another person to my lab. Right now, I'm working on an grant to go to the Army for breast cancer research and a grant to a private…
oracknows | January 25, 2007Oh, no! The gay bands are here! Hide your children, and keep them away from this corruption! So sayeth Donnie Davies, an evangelical preacher who runs a website called Love God's Way:
One of the most dangerous ways homosexuality invades family life is through popular music. Parents should keep careful watch over their children's listening habits, especially in this Internet Age of MP3 piracy.
Oooh. Scary!
But let's look at the list of bands that Davies thinks we should all watch out for and protect our children from. The first thing I noticed is that Elton John is listed twice. Given what a…
oracknows | January 24, 2007The other day, I did a reality check on a story making the rounds through the blogosphere about an alleged new cure for cancer that, if you believe some hysterical bloggers, is being suppressed because it would cut into their profits. I took one blogger to task for what I characterized as the "utterly ridiculous title" of his post (Objectively Pro-cancer). Well, he apparently didn't like that and showed up in my comments claiming that he was joking.
It sure didn't sound like a joke to me, but I thought I'd poll my readers to see if anyone thought I was out of line in my criticism. So, look at…
oracknows | January 24, 2007At the risk of muscling in on Bronze Dog's territory, I've encountered a phenomenon that ought to be in his list of doggerel but doesn't appear to be. It appeared in the comments of my post about the Arthur Allen-David Kirby debate and my discussion of how the human tendency to see patterns where none really exist, coupled with the emotional investment the parents of autistic children have in their children and fueled by unscrupulous purveyors of harmful woo like Mark and David Geier, manages to keep the myth that mercury in vaccines is responsible for the "epidemic" of autism alive. My point…