oracknows | September 21, 2011We get hate mail. Or I do. True, I don't get an inordinate amount of hate mail, but I do get some. A lot of the time, it's rather boring and predictable, which is why I don't often respond to it on the blog, although sometimes against my better judgment I respond by e-mail. That happens less and less frequently, though, given my e-mail volume between work, personal life, and the blog.
Less tiresome is hate mail from proponents of alternative medicine whom I have apparently really, really annoyed. Well, sometimes it's less boring. Often it's very boring indeed, but sometimes when I'm in the…
oracknows | September 20, 2011Whenever I write about the woo that is reiki, I feel obligated to point out just what reiki is. Sure, it might be repetitive, but I hope my regular readers will indulge me. I never know when new readers will pop in, and it is necessary to do a bit of review. Basically, reiki is faith healing that substitutes Eastern mystical beliefs for the more "conventional" Christian beliefs that undergird the the scams of faith healers like Benny Hinn or Peter Popoff. Indeed, that's one reason why the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops declared that reiki should not be offered in Catholic hospitals, and…
oracknows | September 19, 2011A couple of months ago, right before TAM 9, I took note of a rather disturbing post by one of the regular bloggers on the anti-vaccine crank blog Age of Autism. Basically, the post was worrisome because in it Kent Heckenlively portrayed those who oppose anti-vaccine pseudoscience as "wicked," even quoting Psalm 94, which is a psalm that calls upon the Lord to bring his vengeance upon the wicked and destroy them. He also invoked Stephen King's novel The Stand. Normally, this wouldn't be such a big deal, except for its timing. Most skeptics will know that The Amazing Meeting is a yearly meeting…
oracknows | September 16, 2011A few days ago, Michelle Bachmann laid down napalm grade burning stupid about the HPV vaccine. Today, Funny or Die sums it up perfectly.
Michele Bachmann chooses STD's - watch more funny videos
The not unexpected thing is, instead of retreating under criticism, Bachmann appears to be doubling down on her anti-vaccine silliness.
oracknows | September 16, 2011"CHEMOTHERAPY KILLS!!!!"
I've lost count of how many times I've come across brain-dead statements like the one above, often in all caps on websites resembling that of the Time Cube guy, quite frequently with more than one exclamation point, on the websites of "natural healers," purveyors of "alternative medicine." In fact, if you Google "chemotherapy doesn't work," "chemotherapy is poison," or "chemotherapy kills," you'll get thousands upon thousands of hits. In the case of "chemotherapy kills," Indeed, the top two autofill choices I get on Google for "chemotherapy kills" are "chemotherapy…
oracknows | September 14, 2011Oh goody.
Goody, goody, goody, goody, goody.
As I sat down to lay down a bit of the old ultrainsolence on a hapless bit of psuedoscience, I was near despair. For whatever reason, there didn't appear to be anything new out there for me to sink my teeth into. True, when this has happened in the past, I've often delved deep into the Folder of Woo in search of tasty tidbits of quackery saved for just this eventuality, but I really hate to do that. After all, it might be good to apply science, critical thinking, and reason to a particularly nonsensical bit of pseudoscience (which is fun) or to a…
oracknows | September 13, 2011I don't often blog about politics anymore. As I've said on more than one occasion, political bloggers are a dime a dozen. Rare is the one that interests me much. However, sometimes things happen that lead me to make an exception, except that this time it's not really an exception because it has to do with two of the main topics that this blog is all about: science and the anti-vaccine movement. Those of you who watched the Republican debate the other day or saw the news reports about it yesterday probably know where this is going, but I'll go there anyway. First, I can't help but express my…
oracknows | September 13, 2011Unfortunately, I don't get to see very many movies these days. My wife and I both lead very busy lives, and with periodic spasms of grant writing, plus several new administrative responsibilities, it's just hard. Last weekend, however, a movie that I'd rather like to see came out. Unfortunately, I haven't seen it yet; so I can't give you a definitive review, but the movie caught my interest because it shows at least one thing that I don't recall ever having seen in a movie before. The movie is Contagion, and here's its trailer:
It's not so much the storyline that interests me. After all,…
oracknows | September 11, 2011If there's one thing about anti-vaccine activists that is virtually their sine qua non, it's an utter lack of understanding of science. Actually, a more accurate description would be that it's a highly selective understanding of science. Nowhere do I find this to be the case as much as when I see anti-vaccine loons pulling what I like to call the "toxins gambit," or, as I've put it before, "Why are we injecting TOXINS into our babies?" It's a gambit that anti-vaccine activists seemingly never tire of, and it comes in a wide variety of forms, but they all have one of two things in common.…
oracknows | September 11, 2011Once again we come to another September 11. It's hard to believe that it's been ten years since that horrible day. It's become my tradition over the last few years to post this video as a reminder of what happened that day.
This video was shot by Bob and Bri, who in 2001 lived in a high rise a mere 500 yards from the North Tower. On this tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, I think it's important to post this again. It is the most prolonged and continuous video of the attack that I have seen, and, as such, It is difficult to watch.
That's why it's so important to watch.
Second,…
oracknows | September 9, 2011ORAC NOTE: Work kept me out late last night going out to dinner with a visiting professor. Fortunately, it was actually pretty fun. Unfortunately, it kept me from cooking up a heapin' helpin' of the Insolence, either Respectful or not-so-Respectful, that my readers crave. So instead, here's a repost from elsewhere. I didn't think I could use it because the deadline for the survey I discuss was originally September 1. Fortunately, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO) extended the deadline to September 16, making this post relevant for exactly one more week. Enjoy! And go…
oracknows | September 7, 2011One aspect of "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) is the resurgence of practice of what has frequently been called "traditional Chinese medicine" (TCM). I've pointed out before that TCM is a prescientific system of medicine based largely on superstition and vitalism. Indeed, where ancient Greek and European medical systems believed that disease is due to imbalances in the four humors, TCM postulates disease to be due to imbalances in the five elements: Water, wood, fire, earth, and metal. These elements are thought to be related by cycles known as the Shen or Nourishing Cycle and…
oracknows | September 7, 2011I don't recall how many times I've said lately that I detest the term "integrative medicine." As I've pointed out time and time again, it's the preferred "successor," if you will, to the term "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) (at least among the woo-friendly). After all, as I've pointed out before, it just won't do to have the fashionable quackery du jour be considered as only being "complementary" or "alternative" to real medicine. That implies at best that it has a subsidiary role to real medicine and at worst that it is not real medicine, being "alternative" and all. The whole…
oracknows | September 6, 2011Sigh.
Why, oh, why do news organizations do such ridiculously stupid things?
In this case, the CBC decided to put up a poll regarding the chickenpox vaccine. Here's the setup:
The Canadian Pediatric Society (CPS) says children should receive two doses of the chickenpox vaccine to avoid losing immunity and developing the disease as adults.
Chickenpox is an infectious disease that results in a blister-like rash, itching, tiredness, and fever. (Dr. John Noble, Jr./CDC)"Adults who get chickenpox have more serious illness, are more likely to get pneumonia and to be admitted to hospital. They also…
oracknows | September 5, 2011Over the weekend, I chilled out a bit, at least as far as the blog was concerned. I won't make too much of a secret of it, but thanks to the new policy of the new owners I have a decision to make. In the meantime, while I'm dithering, you, my readers, were deluging me with requests. Well, it wasn't exactly a deluge. Maybe three or four e-mails. But, hey, over a dull holiday weekend, when I spend most of the time either working on a grant or working in my yard? That's a deluge! Never let it be said, either, that I don't give the people what they want (usually, at least). So what are the latest…
oracknows | September 5, 2011This happens to be a holiday weekend. Believe it or not, sometimes even Orac needs a break from life, the universe, and every blog, particularly this one. I'll be back tomorrow. In the meantime, I realize that I've posted videos like this before (in fact, I'm sure that at some point or another I've linked to this one, but, hey, it's a holiday). However, this one is amazingly prescient, given that it dates back to the early 1990s.
Have fun commenting, and Orac will return on Tuesday--or even possibly before that....
oracknows | September 1, 2011One of my interests in skepticism and critical thinking has been the similarity in the fallacious arguments, approach to data, and general behavior of those who are--to put it generously--not so skeptical or scientific in their approach to life. I'm talking about believers in the paranormal, quacks, anti-vaccine activists, conspiracy theory mavens, Holocaust deniers, creationists, anthropogenic global warming denialists, and cranks of all stripes. Indeed, it is this similarity in mindset that led Mark Hoofnagle to coin the term "crank magnetism," a perfect description of how people who…
oracknows | August 31, 2011It's one of those things that can't be repeated too many times, but homeopathy is ridiculous. In fact, so ridiculous is homeopathy that I don't usually write about it all that often. The reason is that, like homeopathic dilutions, a bit of skeptical blogging about homeopathy goes a long, long way (although I'm not sure whether diluting the blogging makes it stronger). True, anti-vaccine ideas are often just as ridiculous, but they're also dangerous to children, which is why I'll sometimes write about nothing but anti-vaccine nonsense for several days in a row. Homeopathy, on the other hand,…
oracknows | August 30, 2011Sometimes I feel a little bit guilty when I'm writing a post deconstructing anti-vaccine nonsense, "alternative medicine" quackery, or some other form of pseudoscience. This guilt usually derives when I end up picking a target that's just too easy, a study that's just so mind-numbingly, brain-meltingly awful that it's not much of a challenge, even though at the time I perceive that it needs to be done. I suppose it's like the feeling that a professional sports team might feel if it were ever paired with a high school team--or even a junior high--team for a game. In fact, I was half-tempted…
oracknows | August 29, 2011I detest the term "integrative medicine," which is what promoters of "alternative medicine" pivoted to call "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) when they decided that they needed to lose the word "alternative" altogether. After all, no longer were CAM practitioners content to have their favorite quackery be "complementary" to real medicine because "complementary" implied a subsidiary position and they wanted to be co-equals with physicians and science- and evidence-based medicine. The term "integrative medicine" (IM) served their purpose perfectly, and "integrative medicine"…