oracknows | November 24, 2006...because some serious weirdness has invaded Respectful Insolence.
If you want to know where, just look at these comments that popped up overnight about an old post of mine about the moon landing in 1969.
oracknows | November 24, 2006It may be Thanksgiving weekend here in the States, and fellow ScienceBloggers PZ and Ed may be getting sniping at each other over Larry Moran's rather intemperate comments. (Can't we all just get along, guys, at least for the holidays anyway?). Worse, this kerfluffle is threatening to suck in other fellow ScienceBloggers Mike Dunford, John Wilkins, John Lynch, and Chad Orzel, as well.
You know, this whole thing reminds me a lot of political and religious arguments that used to break out among my family sometimes during holiday gatherings. Let's hope the results of this one, like the results…
oracknows | November 23, 2006Since some other members of the ScienceBlogs collective are doing it, link whore that I am, I couldn't resist putting my blog into this site and seeing where it ranked.
And here's the result:
With 516 links in the last 180 days, Technorati places http://scienceblogs.com/insolence in the very high authority group.
That makes you a A-List Blogger!
Fortunately (and yet one more thing to be thankful for on Thanksgiving), this is probably the only way I'll ever be in any way associated with Paris Hilton. I was tempted to take a picture of Orac and Photoshop him into the picture above, but decided…
oracknows | November 23, 2006Here's some reading to keep you entertained while the Respectfully Insolent gang loads up on turkey:
1. Grand Rounds Vol. 3, No. 9 (albeit a couple of days late)
2. Tangled Bank #67: Giving Thanks for Science
3. The Carnival of Bad History No. 11
oracknows | November 23, 2006Here's wishing everyone who celebrates it a Happy Thanksgiving. As you might expect, our blog mascot is joining in the fun, preparing the turkey, and loading up on tryptophan!
And one more below the fold.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
oracknows | November 22, 2006So hit him.
Hit him hard.
He's 40,000 hits away from 1,000,000 visits.
Help get him over the top.
Given that I'm starting to get in that range (866,000 hits as of this morning), here's hoping someone will help me out in around two or three months, which is when I estimate that I'll be approaching 1,000,000.
Of course, I'm looking forward to the blogging death match that Dr. DB will have to participate in once he hits 1,000,000.
oracknows | November 22, 2006Fellow ScienceBlogger Alex Palazzo has discovered autism quackery.
I'm hurt.
I'm hurt because apparently Alex doesn't read my blog. (Just kidding; I don't read every ScienceBlog, either, although I do read many of them and peruse the Last 24 Hours Feed regularly for topics of interest.) If he did, he'd know that simply giving useless RNA from yeast in supplements (it's useless because, as Alex points out in detail, RNA is highly unstable and broken down quickly in the stomach to its component ribonucleic acids) is actually one of the more benign forms of autism quackery. At least it probably…
oracknows | November 22, 2006This time around for 48th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle, a skeptic by the 'nym of decorabilia presents his Last Will and Testament to the Circle, and bequeaths his worldly possessions to his fellow skeptics:
I am old and tired, my son. I feel the creeping chill of death in these creaking bones. I smell the heather of heavenly meadows and hear the distant strains of Gabriel's flugelhorn. Listen as I croak out my last will and testament. Lean in close. No, not that close. Your breath stinks.
Read the rest.
Next up to host is Dad of Cameron over at Autism Street on December 7. Start getting…
oracknows | November 22, 2006A few days ago, I posted a response to another physician who was not happy with me, no, not happy with me at all. What made him unhappy was the vociferousness with which I criticized the creeping infiltration of woo that is insinuating itself into medical school curricula and expressed dismay at the threat that I see to evidence-based medicine (EBM) from it. He interpreted this vociferousness as "anger," but in reality it is more frustration, a dismay that was exacerbated by his defense of including unproven therapies in his practice. I did not respond so harshly somuch because I think that…
oracknows | November 21, 2006On Saturday afternoon, after a morning of rounding on the service's patients and doing some odds and ends in the office and the lab, on the way home I stopped at the local Best Buy because I needed some blank DVDs. To my puzzlement, there were people lined up outside as though they were camping out for tickets for the most popular rock band in the world. There were sleeping bags, chairs, tents, and coolers. I had no clue what was going on. Then I saw this, and realized that it was the afternoon before the midnight launch of the Nintendo Wii.
Can someone explain to me why people would line up…
oracknows | November 21, 2006I tried not to do it. I really did.
I tried to resist the temptation to respond to Deepak Chopra's latest incursions into woo as he flailed futilely at Richard Dawkins' arguments for science. Fortunately, PZ Myers and MarkCC have been around to take down his idiocy. But then I thought about it Why should they have all the fun? Besides, the discussion I've been having over the last week or so about the infiltration of pseudoscientific woo into the nation's medical schools and its promotion by medical students is just way too depressing. I needed to switch topics, although I'm not sure that…
oracknows | November 20, 2006The latest Pediatric Grand Rounds has been posted, and this time it's being hosted by fellow ScienceBlogger Tara Smith at Aetiology. Check it out.
oracknows | November 20, 2006I don't know about you, but I was getting a little tired of writing so often about the same topic last week, namely the insinuation of unscientific and unproven "alternative medicine" into the medical school curriculum and its promotion by the American Medical Student Association (AMSA). I had planned on giving the topic a rest for a while, but then on a mailing list to which I subscribe, an example came up of something so outrageously egregious that I had to post just one more time. (Dr. R. W., as usual, has beaten me to it, but I plan on going into it in a little more detail.) It's a…
oracknows | November 19, 2006Via Recursivity and Pharyngula, I've learned that, after being an embarrassment to Princeton University for nearly three decades, the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) laboratory is closing due to lack of funding. I'm only amazed that it held on so long. Let's just hope that Deepak Chopra doesn't decide to bail it out.
From my perspective, given this news, the most important question of all is: How will the impending closing of PEAR affect the Global Orgasm (news story here) scheduled for December 22 and featured in last week's Your Friday Dose of Woo? After all, the organizers…
oracknows | November 19, 2006A couple of days ago, I wrote a criticism of the increasing tendency to teach woo in American medical schools and then later followed up with a post questioning the contention that teaching woo has the benefit of improving the doctor-patient relationship. A physician going by the 'nym Solo Practitioner took umbrage:
As a physician, I find the anger with which this blog is written disturbing. The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine was created by the NIH to provide grant money and motivation for research to be performed in these fields in order to apply evidence-based…
oracknows | November 19, 2006Via Holocaust Controversies, I've become aware of a new anti-denier blog, Holocaust Denial Absurdities. Its first couple of posts look promising, such as this description of the censorship of opposing viewpoints that goes on at a denier forum.
oracknows | November 18, 2006Mourn, Michigan fans. On the eve of the most important Big Ten game of the season this year between two of the greatest rivals in college football history, the University of Michigan and Ohio State University, the greatest coach in U. of M. history has passed away:
Legendary University of Michigan football coach Bo Schembechler died today at age 77 from an apparent heart attack while taping a weekly television show.
Schembechler was rushed from the Channel 7 studio where he was taping "Big Ten Ticket'' to Providence Hospital in Southfield at 9:17 a.m.
Schembechler collapsed on Oct. 20, also…
oracknows | November 18, 2006Fellow ScienceBlogger (I'm not all that enamored of the term "SciBling") Abel Pharmboy has finally weighed in on the issue of alternative medicine woo finding its way into medical school curricula and its promotion by the American Medical Student Association, which Dr. RW, Joseph, and I have been discussing the last few days.
Besides using his experience in natural products medicine to discuss this issue, Abel asks a very pointed question from a patient's perspective:
So, someone like me who feels a doctor doesn't have time for them might approach any one of the growing number of integrative…
oracknows | November 17, 2006It's almost here. In fact, it's closer than you would think, because of the Thanksgiving holiday here in the U.S.
Yes, the Skeptics' Circle is due to land at this session's host (decorabilia) one day early, on Wednesday, November 22. So this time around the deadline will be Tuesday, November 21. decorabilia provides instructions on how to submit your blog posts here, and a more general description of what the Circle is looking for, along with a hosting schedule can be found here.
And, as always, if you're interested in hosting, drop me a line at oracknows@gmail.com. I've heard rumblings that…
oracknows | November 17, 2006Given my love of science and advocacy of evidence-based medicine, people may have come to the erroneous conclusion that I hate all woo. Nothing could be further from the truth. I just want medical woo to be subject to the same scientific testing as conventional medicine, because I believe that there should not even be a difference between "alternative medicine" and medicine. There's just medicine that has good scientific, clinical, and epidemiological evidence to suggest it works, and that's all I care about. Heck, if someone produced good scientific evidence that there was something to…