oracknows | November 20, 2010Silly Crispian, any homeopath will tell you that this isn't a valid test of homeopathy because you didn't adequately succuss at each step. (Of course, then there's the issue of succussing it against a Bible, which Hahnemann himself favored.) I also would have recommended using a different pipette for each dilution to make sure there was minimal to no carry-over. Of course, this latter comment has nothing to do with the validity of homeopathy (which has none) but the possibility of falsely elevating the level of residual piss at each dilution.
One wonders what else homeopathic piss could…
oracknows | November 19, 2010The other day I had a bit of fun deconstructing a shockingly bad post by a blogger at the anti-vaccine crank blog Age of Autism named Dan Olmsted. In his post, he criticized the progressive movement for not "getting" autism. It was one of the silliest bits of whining I had ever seen, in essence a crybaby crying because "his people" weren't paying attention to his book.
Shockingly, yesterday Olmsted was able to find a post from a "progressive" who was willing to drink deeply of the anti-vax Kool Aid without realizing that he's doing so and agree with him. For instance, let's take a look at…
oracknows | November 18, 2010In terms of promoting woo and quackery, there is one person who stands head and shoulders above all the rest. True, she doesn't just promote woo and quackery, but she does have a long list of dubious achievements in that realm, including but not limited to unleashing Jenny McCarthy and her anti-vaccine crusade plus Suzanne Somers and her "bioidentical hormone" and cancer quackeries on an unsuspecting American public. She's also subjected us to both Dr. Phil and Dr. Oz to the point of actually launching them on their own shows, promoting the mystcial mumbo-jumbo wish fulfillment that is The…
oracknows | November 18, 2010Homeopathy remains the perfect quackery because it is nothing but water. Even homeopaths seem to recognize this implicitly. If they did not, then there would be no need for all the mental mastubation they engage in to imbue their magic water with "memory," such that, as Tim Minchin so famously put it, it "remembers" all the good stuff it's been in contact with but forgets all the poo that's been in it. Truly, it is magic. Alternatively, homepaths will try to claim that the process of dilution and vigorous shaking between each serial dilution (or, as homepaths refer to it, succussion) somehow…
oracknows | November 16, 2010Woo-meisters love to build massive straw men about what skepticism is, the better to tear it down with gusto and paint skeptics as close-minded "debunkers." I just came across a video that does just that (click on the link for even more straw men in addition to the video), but in one of the most overblown and ridiculous ways I've ever seen. Can you count the number of straw men and outright lies about skepticism and skeptics in this video?
I lost track fairly early on, so fast and furious came the misinformation, particularly because the portrayal of skeptics and skepticism wasn't even…
oracknows | November 16, 2010I hadn't planned on beating on that wretched hive of anti-vaccine scum and quackery, Age of Autism, again today so soon after having done so not just once but twice yesterday. I really hadn't. After all, AoA is the crank gift that keeps on giving (and has kept on giving for three years now), and there is such a thing as going to the well too many times; i.e., too much of a "good" thing. I say this even though I had been planning on posting a blog post "rerun" today because last night I went out to dinner with a job candidate for our institution and didn't get back until late. By the time I…
oracknows | November 15, 2010Earlier today, I had a bit of fun deconstructing Dan Olmsted's whiny complaint about how "progressives don't 'get' autism," his definition of "getting" autism being, of course, buying into the scientifically discredited notion that vaccines cause autism and the quackery known as "autism biomed" that anti-vaccine loons like Olmsted advocate to "recover" autistic children. Of course, I wrote my little bit of not-so-Respectful Insolence last night; so I didn't get to see a rather amusing additional bit of information showing Olmsted to be clueless that happened to pop up today. First, let's look…
oracknows | November 15, 2010Every so often on this blog I get in the mood to take on a post on the anti-vaccine propaganda blog Age of Autism. Over the three years of its existence, I've seen some truly bizarre posts, ranging from one blogger blithely discussing how he took his daughter to Costa Rica for stem cell quackery to treat her autism to rants against journalists who have the temerity to point out that the scientific evidence out there does not support the idea that vaccines cause autism to attacks on perceived enemies of the anti-vaccine movement in which these enemies have their heads crudely Photoshopped into…
oracknows | November 14, 2010Yesterday my wife and I were doing a bit of shopping for various household supplies at one of our favorite stores, our local Target. Having already been disturbed by the sheer volume of Christmas decorations and items on sale two weeks before Thanksgiving, I was even more disturbed to see this:
Yep, it's everywhere. Oscillococcinum. A homeopathic treatment, quackery right there on the shelves. The only thing good I could think of to say about this is that it's absolutely true that this remedy is, as advertised on the package, non-drowsy, with no interactions with other drugs, and without…
oracknows | November 12, 2010Last night, seeking to expand the name of Orac rather than his waistline, I did a skeptical meetup with a local skeptics' group to discuss the topic of quackademic medicine. A fine time was had by all (at least as far as I can tell). What that means, unfortunately, is that I got back too late last night to have time to prepare a helping of new insolence that you all crave. (And you know you do crave it so.) Fortunately, the archives are here and chock full of excellent woo to republish from time to time, perfect for this situation, and I'm taking advantage of them now. The installation from…
oracknows | November 12, 2010Last night, seeking to expand the name of Orac rather than his waistline, I did a skeptical meetup with a local skeptics' group to discuss the topic of quackademic medicine. A fine time was had by all (at least as far as I can tell). What that means, unfortunately, is that I got back too late last night to have time to prepare a helping of new insolence that you all crave. (And you know you do crave it so.) Fortunately, the archives are here and chock full of excellent woo to republish from time to time, perfect for this situation, and I'm taking advantage of them now. The installation from…
oracknows | November 11, 2010Check out the latest Andrew Wakefield tweet. Yep, that's him Tweeting out a link to the infamously intellectually dishonest post by Dr. Raymond Obomsawin entitled Proof That Vaccines Didn't Save Us, just as Australian anti-vaccine loon Meryl Dorey posted the same link on her blog about a month ago and Obomsawin himself is continuing to promote the same intellectually dishonest, graphs of cherry-picked data. To me, that puts Wakefield in the same low league as Dorey herself.
Once again, Andrew Wakefield, meet Orac and his deconstruction of Obomsawin's tour de force of anti-vaccine misdirection…
oracknows | November 11, 2010I don't know how I missed this article. I really don't. It's over a week old, and it's exactly the sort of irritating cancer quackery that normally draws me irresistibly to it to slather it in a heapin' helpin' of not-so-Respectful Insolence. After all, being a cancer surgeon and all, I really, really hate cancer quackery, even more so than I detest other forms of quackery. I hate it even more when it comes from Mike Adams, creator of NaturalNews.com, that one-stop shop for all things quackery, anti-vaccine, and conspiracy. Basically, it's an example of Mike Adams discovering something about…
oracknows | November 10, 2010I didn't feel much like blogging last night, but I felt as though I had to, even if it's brief.
Yesterday was one of those crappy days where there were a lot of problems that didn't relent, so much so that I was completely occupied and didn't check my e-mail until the evening. It was at that point that I wish I hadn't. What I found in my in box was a whole slew of e-mails informing me that a friend had died.
Mark was a friend I had never met.
One of the odd things about the Internet is that it is indeed quite possible to become virtual friends with someone, forging a friendship that lasts for…
oracknows | November 9, 2010It occurs to me that I ought to thank Mark Hyman, "pioneer of functional medicine," and creator of "Ultrawellness," particularly since he started blogging for that wretched hive of scum and quackery (WHSQ), The Huffington Post. He may not post all that often, but when he does I can be assured that the woo will be flowing in torrents from HuffPo to my computer screen, thus providing me with yet another dose of blogging material. Not surprisingly, given Hyman's history, his latest bit on HuffPo is no different. Entitled Cancer Research: New Science on How to Prevent and Treat Cancer From TEDMED…
oracknows | November 8, 2010I advocate science-based medicine (SBM) on this blog. However, from time to time, consider it necessary to point out that SBM is not the same thing as turning medicine into a science. Rather, I argue that what we do as clinicians should be based in science. Contrary to what some might claim, this is not a distinction without a difference. If we were practicing pure science, we would theoretically be able to create algorithms and flowcharts telling us how to care for patients with any given condition, and we would never deviate from them. It is true that we do have algorithms and flowcharts…
oracknows | November 6, 2010As a final post on Vaccine Awareness Week, after having asked what it means to be anti-vaccine, before moving onI thought I'd post this video, a link to which Andrew Wakefield himself tweeted:
Who says Andrew Wakefield is not anti-vaccine? If he does, he's lying. But, then, Andrew Wakefield does lie a lot.
oracknows | November 5, 2010As Vaccine Awareness Week, originally proclaimed by Joe Mercola and Barbara Loe Fisher to spread pseudoscience about vaccines far and wide and then coopted by me and several other bloggers to counter that pseudoscience, draws to a close, I was wondering what to write about. After all, from my perspective, on the anti-vaccine side Vaccine Awareness Week had been a major fizzle. Joe Mercola had posted a series of nonsensical articles about vaccines, as expected, but Barbara Loe Fisher appeared to have sat this one out, having posted nothing. Well, not quite. More like almost nothing. I noticed…
oracknows | November 4, 2010I may have taken a break yesterday, but that doesn't mean I've abandoned my mission to make this Vaccine Awareness Week (or, more properly, the Anti-vaccine Movement Awareness Week, dedicated to countering the lies of the anti-vaccine movement). Even though it was good to take a day off, the anti-vaccine movement rarely takes a day off, and yesterday was no exception. Indeed, one of the most belligerent anti-vaccinationists of all, the meanest, ugliest, nastiest one, the meanest anti-vaccine bull of all, decided to show up for the first time in a long time yesterday on his organization's…
oracknows | November 3, 2010There was no time to blog last night due to a lovely night out with my beautiful wife. Fortunately, this week being Vaccine Awareness Week, I have an interview with a "friend" of mine on...vaccines! Yes, Skeptically Speaking somehow thought this dufus was worth interviewing. Fortunately, he makes a lot of sense when it comes to vaccines.
Check it out.
Fear not, though, there are plenty of targets topics for tomorrow and beyond...