oracknows | January 9, 2007Inspired by the story of the faith healer who claimed that Jesus cured her of a breast cancer she in fact never had and, it turned out, who also claimed that faith had healed her brother of a terminal cancer and covered up the fact that he was dying while promoting her book, here's a proposed cure for televangelists who claim they can cure disease through the power of prayer:
New York - (Ass Mess): A team of plastic surgeons, clinical psychatrists and orthodontists has patented a radical procedure that cures evangelical preachers from claiming Jesus is more effective at healing cancer than…
oracknows | January 9, 2007It is with a bit of trepidation that I write about this.
The reason, for anyone who reads ScienceBlogs specifically or science blogs in general, should be obvious. Richard Dawkins is such a polarizing figure with a penchant for stirring things up with regards to the most deeply held beliefs of both the religious and atheists, that he has all too often served as a flashpoint for battles between secularism and religion or a convenient excuse for the two most popular of my fellow ScienceBloggers to indulge their mutual animosity publicly. Posting about Dawkins, whether you defend or criticize…
oracknows | January 8, 2007White supremacist Kevin Strom is busted:
Jan. 4, 2007 -- A leader of the white supremacist movement was arraigned today on charges of possession of child pornography and witness tampering after being arrested by FBI agents Thursday night at his home in Charlottesville, Va.
Kevin Alfred Strom, founder of the National Vanguard white supremacist group, was considered the leading intellectual of the movement since the death of William Pierce, the author of the notorious "Turner Diaires."
Strom was arraigned in U.S. District Court in Charlottesville, charged with the two counts, and is currently…
oracknows | January 8, 2007Last week, our Seed overlords published on the flagship an Agence France-Presse article about a survey in Britain whose results showed that large numbers of people believe that cancer is due to "fate" rather than risk factors that can be modified to decrease one's risk of developing the disease:
LONDON (AFP)--More than a quarter of people believe that fate alone will determine whether they get cancer, not their lifestyle choices, according to a survey conducted by charity Cancer Research UK.
The poll of more than 4,000 adults across the country asked people if they thought they could reduce…
oracknows | January 8, 2007It was just last week that I was made aware of the sad news that Katie Wernecke, the 14-year-old girl with Hodgkin's lymphoma whose parents' battle to reject radiation therapy and additional chemotherapy made national news in 2005 and who ultimately went for high dose vitamin C therapy at an altie clinic in Kansas, had relapsed. (Even now, altie vultures are advertising their wares in the comments of the post in which Katie's father announced her relapse, and chastising a lone MD who posted a comment begging the family to try conventional medicine while there's still a chance.) As regular…
oracknows | January 7, 2007You be the judge.
I find it odd, though, that the name of the bride and groom are not mentioned in the story.
oracknows | January 7, 2007I like this T-shirt design!
Perhaps our Seed overlords would spring for sufficient funds to clothe all of us ScienceBloggers in this fine garb.
(Via Boing Boing.)
oracknows | January 7, 2007The name of this band is damned near perfect:
No, not the Shut-Ups (although that's a pretty cool band name, too). Anyone who reads this blog would know that I'm referring to Down With The Woo.
I wonder if their music is any good. If so, they could become the blog band of Respectful Insolenceâ¢. (or at least of Your Friday Dose of Woo, although most people seem to actually like Friday Woo). Fortunately, in that interest, I was informed of their MySpace page, which says:
Up from the ashes of cult heroes, Heros Severum. Powered by Macintosh. DWTW is a live production experiment. Every show is…
oracknows | January 6, 2007Before I move on to other topics, I can't resist one last comment about the corrupt and sleazy Andrew Wakefield, the man who, with the help of heaping piles of cash from lawyers, almost singlehandedly produced a scare over the possibility that the MMR vaccine causes autism so large that vaccination rates in the U.K. fell precipitously, leading to massive misery due to a resurgence of the diseases prevented by the MMR vaccine and at least one death. Brian Deer, as you may know, is the journalist who exposed the disgusting underbelly of Wakefield's activities and who also broke the story of…
oracknows | January 6, 2007In case anyone from Southern California of a skeptical bent is interested in attending the debate about whether thimerosal in vaccines causes autism, here is the event information that I mentioned yesterday:
Vaccines and Autism, Is There a Connection?
A Thoughtful Debate
Saturday, January 13, 2007
Featuring:David Kirby - Author, Evidence of Harm
and Arthur Allen - Author, Vaccine: The Controversial Story of Medicine's Greatest Lifesaver
Event Information:
Location: UC San Diego Price Center, 9500 Gilman Dr., La Jolla, CA 92093
Time: Lecture & Debate 10:00am to 12:30pm
Reception &…
oracknows | January 5, 2007Better late than never, I guess.
I should have announced three days ago that the polls are now open to vote for the 2006 Medical Weblog Awards. Polls will close at midnight on Sunday, January 14, 2007 (PST), and the winners will be announced on Friday, January 19, 2007.
I happen to be nominated for Best Medical Weblog, but the competition is fierce, with other deserving nominees including fellow ScienceBlogs Aetiology, The Examining Room of Dr. Charles, and Effect Measure, plus worthy non-ScienceBlogs such as Surgeonsblog, Flea, Kevin, MD, and the ever-skeptical Unintelligent Design.…
oracknows | January 5, 2007Just a word to my readers. The ScienceBlogs site has been having technical difficulties since yesterday.
You may have noticed that the load times were very slow yesterday and that at times the site was even completely unavailable. The same thing happened for a while this morning, and early this morning I couldn't get into Movable Type to do my traditional last minute editing before I go to work. All the feeds for the main page, the Last 24 Hours page, and all the Channels have not updated since this morning, and I've been informed that even blog-specific RSS feeds appear not to be updating…
oracknows | January 5, 2007It's always a shame to see a once confident man reduced to whining. Well, maybe not always. Sometimes it's immensely satisfying, particularly when that man happens to be David Kirby, who, through his book Evidence of Harm, Mercury in Vaccines and the Autism Epidemic: A Medical Controversy, was one of the two men most responsible for publicizing the pseudoscientific scare-mongering that claims that mercury in thimerosal, the preservative that was until late 2002 used in childhood vaccines, causes autism. (The other was Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.) Unfortunately for poor ol' David, time and science…
oracknows | January 5, 2007It's back.
Yes, I was wondering what would be the best way to start out a brand new year of Your Friday Dose of Woo. Once again, as is all too unfortunately the case, there was an embarrassment of riches, a veritable cornucopia of woo out there, each one seemingly just as worthy of Orac's loving attention as the other. And, after having taken a week off from this, there was even a backup of woo. (I wonder if a little cleansing might be in order to relieve the backup.) Then it occurred to me. I started YFDoW with a very special treatment of some truly spectacular woo known as quantum…
oracknows | January 4, 2007It may be a little later than usual, and my plug may be later than usual because of some truly annoying difficulties that I had with Movable Type tonight, but it's finally here, I've finally plugged it, and it's worth the wait.
Yes, the 51st Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle has been posted at See You at Enceladus.
Next up to host is Frank the Financially Savvy Atheist. (I really love that blog title, particularly the subline: Personal finance with a hint of blasphemy.) Frank will be hosting on Thursday, January 18. So start thinking of skeptical topics that you'd like to blog about and then…
oracknows | January 4, 2007I have to give this guy credit. He boiled down the first three Star Wars movies into a little more than a minute, and he did it while reimagining them as a silent movie:
oracknows | January 4, 2007You know, like the namesake of my nom de blog, I'm not immune to a little vanity. Indeed, I daresay that no human is. What differs among humans are two things: the level of vanity and what we're vain about. Given that I don't have all that much in the looks department going on, it's fortunate that I'm probably not as vain as my blog namesake. Even so, I like to think that I'm pretty intelligent and that possess close to the proper level of skepticism, being neither so credulous that I'm easily fooled nor so skeptical that it devolves into cynicism. Consequently, when someone apparently thinks…
oracknows | January 3, 2007Today, The Cheerful Oncologist reminded me why he was one of my role models when I first started blogging, as he takes on the issue of palliative care:
As often as rain falls from the skies do patients reach that point in their illness where their doctor says "There is nothing more I can do for you."
If you ever hear that phrase, remember this: it is a lie. Physicians who tell their patients this may actually mean "I'm getting depressed watching you die and want to avoid you," or they may think of illness as a contest of skill where only victory has any value, and defeat must be acknowledged…
oracknows | January 3, 2007Two days after the holidays are over, and I'm still taking care of unfinished business from last year. Still, the study I'm about to discuss is making the rounds of the blogosphere, and because it's about breast cancer risk I felt the need to weigh in. This is particularly true, given some of the representations of this study that are popping up in the press and in the blogosphere, particularly among right wing bloggers. Let's start with a BBC news story about the study:
Women who exercise by doing the housework can reduce their risk of breast cancer, a study suggests.
The research on more…
oracknows | January 2, 2007About a month and a half ago, the California Supreme Court ruled on a case in such a way that I'm conflicted about. As anyone who's read this blog knows, I'm very much an advocate of free speech and the First Amendment. The case is Barrett vs. Rosenthal, and it involves the question of whether the reposting on the Internet of material written by someone else can be defamatory. In brief, it involves the question of whether the reposting on Usenet of an opinion by someone else, as the defendant Ilena Rosenthal (a notorious "breast implant activist" and die-hard altie) did, can result in…