oracknows | December 21, 2006I'm about a week late on this one.
In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if some of my readers were wondering why I hadn't weighed in on this story when it broke late last week. (Either that, or no one was wondering, and I'm just displaying some of my surgeon's ego for all to see.) Part of the reason was perhaps because Dr. Charles had handled this whole study well, and I didn't see any need to weigh in. Another part of the reason is because the study came out right when I had to come up with another Your Friday Dose of Woo for last Friday. But, the more I thought about it, the more I thought that…
oracknows | December 20, 2006It's about time:
An Austrian appeals court has ruled that UK historian David Irving - jailed for denying the Holocaust - should be released on probation.
Irving is now being held in police detention and will be deported to the UK on Thursday, officials said.
Irving was convicted in February in a case that sparked international debate about the limits of freedom of speech.
In 1989 he spoke in Austria denying the existence of gas chambers at Auschwitz, though he later said he was "mistaken".
The appeals court in Vienna had heard calls for both a reduction and increase in his sentence.
Irving on…
oracknows | December 20, 2006Tangled Bank #69 has been posted at Salto Sobrius. Martin is labeling it the War on Christmas Edition. He's joking. At least, I think he's joking...
oracknows | December 20, 2006Today is the tenth anniversary of Carl Sagan's death from myelodysplasia at the too-young age of 62. On this day, as part of the Carl Sagan Memorial Blogathon (more here), I'd like to explore three observations about Sagan.
First and foremost, Carl Sagan was brilliant at expressing the sense of wonder at the universe and how amazingly fortunate we are to be able to perceive it. Even as scientists, we often get lost in the nitty gritty and the details of what we are doing. It's all too easy to lose sight of the forest through the trees and forget about just how amazingly beautiful and complex…
oracknows | December 20, 2006Pediatric Grand Rounds, vol. 1, no. 18 has been posted at Breath Spa for Kids:
No cuddly Santa for us, My Hearties. This is a swashbuckling, buccaneering sort of Paediatric Grand Rounds, I have looted and pillaged various blogs and seized control of the Good Ship PGR.
For those so inclined, there's also a non-pirate version at Blog, MD.
oracknows | December 20, 2006Just in case anyone was wondering, the Seed techie was doing some work on the servers last night, and something went awry. The result was the inability to comment on many blogs and the inability of bloggers to post (or even see any of their posts in the editing panel).
Things are fixed now, I can see my posts (both past and planned future posts), and ScienceBlogs should be working OK. If not, let me or someone know.
oracknows | December 20, 2006Dr. Flea's a guy after my own heart. He's been blogging about vaccines, and now he's getting into specific diseases. He's posted an installment about the vaccine against Haemophilus influenza type B:
The first American children to receive the Hib vaccine are turning 20 years old this year.
Flea wasn't practicing medicine in the pre-Hib era, so I asked an older nurse what office-based Pediatrics was like before the vaccine.
"About once a year, a kid would come in with an ear infection. They'd write him a prescription for antibiotics, then he'd go home and die."
Haemophilus influenzae type b (…
oracknows | December 19, 2006As hard as it is to believe, it's official. It appears that Respectful Insolence won the 2006 Weblog Awards as Best Medical/Health Issues blog. I had waited to announce this until it was official, plus a little time because I still couldn't believe it. It would also appear that one other ScienceBlog, Pharyngula, edged out Bad Astronomy Blog to claim the Best Science Blog crown.
Other nominees from the ScienceBlogs collective were also nominated in these two categories, including The Cheerful Oncologist (one of the first medical blogs I discovered and a blog whose style I still sometimes wish…
oracknows | December 19, 2006The latest Grand Rounds has been posted at Nurse Ratched's Place. This time around it's, appropriately enough, a Charlie Brown Christmas theme.
oracknows | December 19, 2006Well this looks interesting, a new blog by the author of Vaccine: The Controversial Story of Medicine's Greatest Lifesaver, Arthur Allen.
Looks like something I may have to check out. Allen captures why various conditions like autism are so readily attributed by parents to vaccines:
The history of vaccination is criss-crossed with controversies. The allegation that vaccines cause autism is only the latest example. What is it about vaccines that attracts so much passion?
The obvious answer is that many vaccines-and most of the ones discussed in this book-are injected with sharp needles into…
oracknows | December 19, 2006
Here's a great idea:
I was staying in a hotel in New York earlier this year, and I noticed that as well as the usual Gideon's bible, there was also a copy of the Quran. So that got me thinking - why limit the principle to religious books, why not get some science in there too?
So, I've decided that from now on, whenever I stay in a hotel room, I'm going to leave behind a copy of ... The Origin of Species...
And now ... I'd like to call on everyone who reads this to do the same thing - next time you stay in a hotel, leave behind a copy of this seminal work. After all - what's the cost of one…
oracknows | December 19, 2006I wish I could say that this was unexpected, but, given the politics and backwardness of Libya, it wasn't. The Tripoli Six (a. k. a. the Benghazi Six) have been found guilty by a kangaroo court in Libya:
A Libyan court has sentenced five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor to death for knowingly infecting hundreds of Libyan children with HIV.
The medics have been in detention since 1999, during which time 52 of the 426 infected children have died of AIDS.
The nurses and doctor were sentenced to death in 2004, but the Supreme Court quashed the ruling after protests over the fairness of…
oracknows | December 18, 2006I don't think I could have done it much better, if at all.
Dr. R.W. presents, in FAQ-form, a primer on the difference between woo and conventional medicine, even conventional modalities that are weakly grounded in evidence.
A couple of examples:
Many of mainstream medicine's conventional treatments are not evidence based. Aren't they a form of woo?
No. Although some conventional methods fail to measure up to best evidence they are at least based on known anatomy and physiology. They have some plausibility in the observable biophysical model in contrast to the "vital forces", nebulous "energy…
oracknows | December 18, 2006The latest Seed Magazine extravaganza happens to include a "class photo" of all of us ScienceBloggers. Orac should be easy to spot. Maybe I should have gone with the cliche of a masked surgeon, but I've got to be true to my alter ego. (No, not that alter ego.)
I guess that's just the lot of a hyperintelligent, cranky clear box of blinking lights.
oracknows | December 18, 2006You may recall how I've criticized the infiltration of woo into medical school and medical education in general. Such an infiltration threatens the scientific basis behind the hard-won success of so much of modern medicine over the last century. Unfortunately, woo isn't the only threat to scientific medicine. Now, there is a growing movement that insists that doctors should ask you about your spiritual life and make religious practices a part of medicine, as Dr. Richard P. Sloan described in an editorial in the L.A. Times that I can't believe I missed:
HOW WOULD you like your doctor, at your…
oracknows | December 17, 2006Nothing like a lot of Queen-esque bombast coupled with lots of flames, courtesy of My Chemical Romance on a Sunday afternoon:
Apparently the drummer actually burned his leg during the shoot. Now that's dedication. I have to admit, though, I think I still like the first video from this album a bit better.
oracknows | December 17, 2006First, check out The Daily Show's take on the Holocaust denial conference, with goodies like Revision Quest and Just Say No. It's the show that characterizes the "question" being discussed at the conference as: Was the entire Holocaust an elaborate episode of Punk'd? Best line: David Duke, he's like the Flock of Seagulls of hate. Or maybe the one about the neo-Nazis who are publishing a book about the Holocaust entitled If We Did It...
But, believe it or not, I've found a take on the Holocaust denial convention, parts of which may be even funnier than The Daily Show, and it comes from a…
oracknows | December 16, 2006We often hear atheists like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and P. Z. Myers castigating the excesses and irrationality of religion. (Heck, I'm often game for joining in when it comes to fundamentalist religion.) While discussing the recent Holocaust denial conference in Iran, Massimo Pigliucci makes a good point when he argues that focusing on just religion is missing the broader context:
The answer, I think, is similar to that of the other unnerving question raised by this week's events: how can some people deny one of the best documented (and recent) historical events of all times? I mean,…
oracknows | December 16, 2006I must have fallen behind in my blog reading, which led me not to notice that Abel Pharmboy over at Terra Sigillata just celebrated his first blogiversary on Friday. Here's to another successful year of science blogging!
If you want to get a taste of what Abel's about, he just posted two good analyses of articles that appeared in the Journal of Clinical Oncology this month, one about the ethics of dealing with situations when parents choose quackery over efficacious treatment for children with good prognosis cancers and another discussing a review article covering the evidence base for the…
oracknows | December 16, 2006Here's an interesting little tidbit of a study:
Newswise -- Lead chelation therapy -- a chemical treatment to remove lead from the body -- can significantly reduce learning and behavioral problems that result from lead exposure, a Cornell study of young rats finds.
However, in a further finding that has implications for the treatment of autistic children, the researchers say that when rats with no lead in their systems were treated with the lead-removing chemical, they showed declines in their learning and behavior that were similar to the rats that were exposed to lead.
Chelating drugs,…