oracknows | August 4, 2013Here we go again.
The "Holy Grail" (well, a "holy grail") of the antivaccine movement is to have a "vaccinated versus unvaccinated" study performed, or, as it's frequently abbreviated a "vaxed verus unvaxed" study. They believe that such a study will confirm their fixed belief that vaccines are the root of nearly all health issues children suffer today, particularly autism and autism spectrum disorders. In particular, they believe that a "vaxed versus unvaxed" study would demonstrate once and for all that vaccines are the cause of the "autism epidemic." Hilariously, a few years back, the…
oracknows | August 2, 2013"Alternative medicine," so-called "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM), or, as it's become fashionable to call it, "integrative medicine" is a set of medical practices that are far more based on belief than science. As my good bud and collaborator Mark Crislip so pointedly reminded us last week, CAM is far more akin to religion than science-based medicine (SBM). However, as I've discussed more times than I can remember over the years, both here and at my not-so-super-secret-other blog, CAM practitioners and advocates, despite practicing what is in reality mostly pseudoscience-based…
oracknows | August 1, 2013After a brief foray yesterday into discussing atheism, tone deafness, and the Holocaust (how's that for an odd combination?), I'm ready to get back to more—shall we say?—conventional topics. One topic that's been popping up at that other wretched hive of scum and antivaccine quackery (one of the ones other than Age of Autism) reveals something about the antivaccine movement that I find educational. Specifically, it has to do with how, once a parent has drunk deeply of the antivaccine Kool Aid, she behaves in a rather cult-like manner. I'll show you what I mean, and the post that best…
oracknows | July 31, 2013I don't read atheist blogs much, if at all. The reason is that they just don't interest me anymore. Sure, like so many, I went through a phase where I was quite enamored of Richard Dawkins' brand of atheism. Then I read The God Delusion (well, most of it, anyway; I didn't bother to read the last couple of chapters because I had lost interest and couldn't force myself to finish them). These days I tend to think of myself as following the church of dontcareism. I just don't care that much one way or the other about religion, and endless arguments about atheism, "atheism-plus," and the like bore…
oracknows | July 29, 2013You might find this hard to believe, but sometimes I find the antivaccine crank blog Age of Autism to be useful. Obviously, I don't find it useful in the same way that its editors think it is useful. Those paragons of the arrogance of ignorance and fetishism of hatred of science-based medicine don't actually teach me anything about vaccines and autism. The torrents of pseudoscience, quackery, conspiracy mongering, and hostility do, however, serve their purpose. They keep my finger on the pulse of the "autism biomed" movement and what the latest "autism biomed" quackery du jour is. It looks…
oracknows | July 28, 2013One of the great things about this blog is the community that has built itself up over the last eight and a half years of this blog's existence. It's a truly amazing an humbling thing to me. I can't believe that such an incredibly smart and talented bunch of advocates, gadflies, and quackbusters. True, I've also had my share of trolls, most frequently of the antivaccine variety, but you guys all take care of them so well that I only seldom feel the need to intervene myself. That's why, from time to time, I like to try to intentionally (rather than unintentionally) spark a bit of conversation…
oracknows | July 26, 2013Like yesterday's post, this will be a post that references our favorite dubious cancer doctor Stanislaw Burzynski but is not primarily about him. However, given the nature of the subject matter, it is impossible not to think of Burzynski, as comparisons are inevitable. Whereas yesterday all we were dealing with was a rather amusing "award" that Stanislaw Burzynski was awarded by a quack who had somehow conned a prominent Cardinal to give the Church's imprimatur on a Catholic medical order he wanted to resurrect to get other quacks to join, this week we're dealing with a serious subject:…
oracknows | July 24, 2013This is a post that is about Stanislaw Burzynski but not about Stanislaw Burzynski. Obviously, regular readers are more than aware who Stanislaw Burzynski is, but even though I just blogged about him a few days ago, I still feel obligated to recount briefly who he is, for the benefit of readers who might have arrived here through Google searches or other means. Stanislaw Burzynski is a famous "cancer doctor" (I use scare quotes because he is not an oncologist and has no clinical training in medical oncology yet practices as a medical oncologist) who discovered something he called "…
oracknows | July 24, 2013It's hard to believe that it's been nearly two years since I first noticed that a board certification in quackery was in the works and appeared to be nearly ready to go. I'm referring, of course, to Andrew Weil's effort to create a board certification in so-called "integrative medicine," better known to those of us on the science-based side of medicine as integrating quackery and pseudoscience with real medicine. Since it's been so long since I last addressed this issue, it's probably worth a brief recap. Basically, back in 2011, Andrew Weil and his Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine (…
oracknows | July 22, 2013Mike Adams (a.k.a. the "Health Ranger") has been a regular blog topic for several years now. There are many reasons for this, not the least of which is that, among supporters of quackery, no one quite brings the crazy home the way Mike Adams does, be it writing antivaccine rap songs, abusing dead celebrities by claiming they would have survived if only they had used whatever quackery Adams supported at the time or painting them as victims of big pharma, or conspiracy mongering on a level that make Alex Jones blush. Truly, Mikey has a special talent among woo-meisters. Joe Mercola might have…
oracknows | July 22, 2013Time really does fly. It's hard to believe that it's been over a week since I gave my big (to me, at least) talk at TAM. It's equally hard to believe that it's been more than a week since I had the honor of being kicked out of Penn Jillette's Private Rock & Roll Bacon & Doughnut Party because back in February I had had the temerity to question whether it was a good idea for Penn & Teller to appear on The Dr. Oz Show. It was a surreal experience, to be sure, to be cussed out publicly (albeit with no mention of my name), kicked out of Penn's private party, and then to have had Penn…
oracknows | July 19, 2013I promised myself that I was done writing about Jenny McCarthy this week. Two posts, a lengthy one and a brief one, lamenting her being hired for a national daytime talk show was, in my view, enough. Unfortunately, something's happened that makes me want to make like Arnold Schwarzenegger in that famous scene from the 1980s action flick Commando, in which he had promised one villain that he would kill him last. Later in the film while holding this same villain over a cliff, Arnold says, "Remember when I promised I would kill you last? I lied."
Except that I wasn't lying at the time. I really…
oracknows | July 18, 2013I've often (perhaps too often) referred to homeopathy as The One Quackery To Rule Them All. If not homeopathy, what other quackery would rule? Homeopathy is, after all, the perfect quackery. Most of its most "potent" remedies are nothing more than water, because homeopaths believe that the more a solution is serially diluted (with succussion, or vigorous shaking, between each serial dilution), the more potent it becomes, and frequently dilute their solutions far beyond the point where it is likely that there is even one molecule of the original substance in the resulting homeopathic dilution…
oracknows | July 17, 2013Sometimes, the mainstream press gets it (mostly) right, and Jake Tapper actually got it right in a report on CNN yesterday about Jenny McCarthy's having been hired by ABC as a regular on The View. Although I don't like how Jake Tapper describes Generation Rescue as an "autism organization" (it is clearly an antivaccine group), and he perhaps didn't rebut Jenny's ludicrous claim that she is "not antivaccine" but rather "pro-safe vaccine" (seriously, he showed McCarthy's 2008 antivaccine protest in Washington and didn't even pick the most inflammatory signs as a counterpoint to McCarthy's…
oracknows | July 17, 2013Believe it or not, I'm going to do Eric Merola (who doesn't particularly like me, to the point of thinking, apparently, that I'm a white supremacist who doesn't like evidence but does like to eat puppies) a favor. Having been away at TAM, somehow I missed this. Well, actually, I didn't miss it, but somehow I forgot to post it. Then when I got home I still forgot to post it. Now there are only three days left (four, counting today) for me to do it; so I'd better get to it. My having forgotten to do this is particularly amazing given the subject of my main stage talk at TAM.
Eric Merola, as you…
oracknows | July 15, 2013Sometimes, as I sit down to write a blog post, I have no idea what I'm going to write about at first. Fortunately, it's rare that I truly have zero idea what I'm going to write about. Usually, there are options, and I don't know which one I'm going to pick. Sometimes, however, something happens that demands that I write about it. Either that, or it's something that I know my readers will want me to write about and will be disappointed if I do not. Unfortunately, in this case, the timing is such that there's been nearly a full day since the announcement of this particularly stupid decision (…
oracknows | July 15, 2013As I write this, I'm winging my way home from TAM, crammed uncomfortably—very uncomfortably—in a window seat in steerage—I mean, coach).
I had thought of simply recounting the adventures of the contingent of skeptics with whom I'm associated who did make it out to TAM to give talks at workshops and the main stage and to be on panels, but that seemed too easy. Also Orac is just too damned egotistical, and, besides, it's a four hour flight. Even so, I would be remiss if, before delving into the topic of today's post, I didn't praise Steve Novella, Harriet Hall, and Mark Crislip, for their…
oracknows | July 12, 2013Greetings, everyone. I realize that I, your host—is that anything like, "I, Tim Bolen"?—have been remiss in not providing the expected daily 2,000 word magnum opus. However, I have been busy plotting with our Lord and Master, Lord Draconis Zeneca. Our plans for world domination and the utter destruction of all "natural" cures are percolating nicely, and I shall be back to begin implementing them next week. In the mean time, the best way to hide our nefarious plans is in plain site; so let's have an open thread here to continue to plot!
oracknows | July 11, 2013Well, I'm here at TAM. I had a great time last night meeting up with old friends, although, thanks to the time difference between Eastern time and Las Vegas, combined with my having to give a talk today, I was forced to retire at an early 11 AM (which, of course, felt to me like 2 AM).
As you might imagine, blogging will be light, because I still have to put the finishing touches on my talk for Saturday and take in all the skeptic-y goodness at TAM, but I can't resist this little tidbit. It's a video I came across the other day that brings a whole new meaning to the term "chiroquacktic."…
oracknows | July 10, 2013Like Steve, I'm off to The Amazing Meeting today. I don't know how much I'll be posting, but, as Han Solo so famously said, "Hey, it's me." I'm sure I won't be able to resist. In any case, I'll be taking part in the Science-Based Medicine workshop tomorrow, and, for the first time ever, I'll be giving a talk on the main stage on Saturday, as half of a tag team with Bob Blaskiewicz slicing and dicing our favorite cancer doctor Stanislaw Burzynski. That will be followed by a panel on—what else?—science-based medicine and how to take on the cranks, quacks, and dubious in medicine.
In any case,…