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David Gorski

Orac is the nom de blog of a humble surgeon/scientist who has an ego just big enough to delude himself that someone, somewhere might actually give a rodent's posterior about his copious verbal meanderings, but just barely small enough to admit to himself that few probably will. That surgeon is otherwise known as David Gorski. That Orac has chosen his nom de blog based on a rather cranky and arrogant computer shaped like a clear box of blinking lights that he originally encountered when he became a fan of a 30 year old British SF television show whose special effects were renowned for their BBC/Doctor Who-style low budget look, but whose stories nonetheless resulted in some of the best, most innovative science fiction ever televised, should tell you nearly all that you need to know about Orac. (That, and the length of the preceding sentence.)

DISCLAIMER: The various written meanderings here are the opinions of Orac and Orac alone, written on his own time. They should never be construed as representing the opinions of any other person or entity, especially Orac's cancer center, department of surgery, medical school, or university. Also note that Orac is nonpartisan; he is more than willing to criticize the statements of anyone, regardless of of political leanings, if that anyone advocates pseudoscience or quackery. Finally, medical commentary is not to be construed in any way as medical advice.

To contact Orac: oracknows@gmail.com

Posts by this author

November 17, 2008
I almost feel sorry for acupuncturists these days. Almost. Well, not exactly. Clearly, given the infiltration of woo into academic medicine, acupuncturists are in demand even in the most allegedly "science-based" of academic medical centers. After all, acupuncture is what I like to refer to as "…
November 16, 2008
As hard as it is to believe, it's almost here. In a mere four days on Thursday, November 20, the 100th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle will land right here at its mothership for the first time in three years. As of this morning, I only have six submissions. That's not nearly enough! I need more,…
November 15, 2008
Downfall was a great movie, arguably the greatest movie about Adolf Hitler's final days ever made. However, it contains one scene, one incredibly powerful scene, where aides bring Hitler news that the last defenses had fallen, that the divisions that Hitler thought he had no longer existed, and…
November 14, 2008
I realize that I made perhaps the biggest splash I've made on this blog in a very, very long time when I wrote about the news reports and rumors that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. was being seriously considered for a high ranking post in the new Obama Administration. Fortunately, this is not yet another…
November 13, 2008
Yesterday, I wrote about the sad case of Motl Brody, a 12-year-old Orthodox Jew whose brain tumor had rendered him brain dead and whose parents are fighting the efforts of the hospital to disconnect him from the ventilator and to stop all the powerful cardiac drugs that are keeping his heart…
November 13, 2008
The things I do for my readers. I'm referring to a movie entitled The Beautiful Truth, links to whose website and trailers several of you have e-mailed to me over the last couple of weeks. Maybe it's because the movie is only showing in New York and Los Angeles and hasn't made it out of the…
November 12, 2008
I realize that the title of this post might sound as though I'm equating brain death and fundamentalist religion. As tempting as it is sometimes to do so, I'm not. What I'm more interested in is a story I came across by way of ScienceBlogs Big Kahuna blogger P.Z. Myers last night, mainly because it…
November 11, 2008
Since I've been on the topic of the Holocaust again today in giving a victim of the Hitler Zombie a well and truly deserved taste of not-so-Respectful Insolence, before I get back to medicine and science tomorrow I can't help but note that it's been brought to my attention that a brand, spankin'…
November 11, 2008
November 4, 2008 11:15 PM EST A mousy little man sat, shaking his head in his hands, limned against the wall by the flickering blue glow of a flat screen TV. On the television, a huge crowd swelled in Grant Park in Chicago. The excitement was palpable, with a constant dull roar of the crowd that…
November 10, 2008
One whole year of antivaccinationist lunacy, that is. Sorry, that's one birthday I won't be sending good wishes over. No other blog brings home the stupid when it comes to vaccines with such regularity. It's a veritable black hole of intellect there, from which no science and reason is ever seen to…
November 10, 2008
I had been planning on taking on a couple of articles about breast cancer to start out the week. However, between having to deal with a tsunami of leaves before Monday, when the giant trucks come along to pick them up today and a number of other issues, I didn't have time. As much as I love taking…
November 8, 2008
Seen on the discussion boards of that other repository of antivaccinationist wingnuttery (other than The Huffington Post), Mothering.com, a commenter by the 'nym of naupakamama exults over the possible appointment of antivaccine wingnut Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to run the Environmental Protection…
November 7, 2008
Geez, it's getting ugly. When FOX News reports this about Palin, you know she was bad: Of course, it's possible, even likely, that McCain campaign staffers are trying to make Palin the scapegoat for the failure of their candidate and them, but there's abundant other evidence that Palin was pretty…
November 7, 2008
As I've said before many times, herbal or plant-based medicines are about the only kind of "alternative" medicine that has significant prior scientific plausibility based on what we know about science. That's because plants often contain biologically active molecules; i.e., they often contain drugs…
November 6, 2008
Yesterday, I wrote about a very disturbing development (disturbing, at least, to the science-based community) in the transition to an Obama Administration. That disturbing development is the multiple reports that antivaccine crank Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is being seriously considered to head the…
November 6, 2008
Unbelievable. It really is. It's simply amazing that The Skeptics' Circle has been around so long. It's been around so long that we're already up to the 99th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle over at Ferret's Cage. The new generation of skepticism has landed with a great addition to the lore of the…
November 6, 2008
I wrote about this study the other day, but clearly I didn't have the final word. As usual, The Onion nails it.
November 5, 2008
One of the aspects of the Barack Obama candidacy that raised my hopes and those of so many of my fellow ScienceBloggers, as well as scientists tired of the crass politicization of science under the Bush administration, was the prospect of an Administration in which science and reason were valued…
November 5, 2008
...is Joseph at Autism Natural Variation. It turns out that he can't find the correlation between precipitation levels and autism diagnoses that Waldman et al study; he too points out that urbanicity was not controlled for; and he even thinks a bit of cherry picking may have occurred. Meanwhile,…
November 5, 2008
I guess Barack Obama's mad hypnotic powers worked. One non-political thing that this election has reminded me of is that when you've been blogging as long as I have (nearly four years now--almost as long as a Presidential term!--assuming you're good and have found a niche in the blogosphere, you…
November 4, 2008
...after all, I'm not a political blogger, except occasionally and maybe once every four years. If I'm still blogging four years from now, we'll see if I feel like morphing into a political blogger again, just for one day. However, I found this nifty little widget that does the job for me: There…
November 4, 2008
I have a bit of a love-hate thing going for Keith Olbermann of MSNBC news. On the one hand, when he takes down Bill O'Reilly for defaming U.S. troops or Sarah Palin for anti-science idiocy, I have to admit, he's effective and sometimes even amusing. However, like some others, I often find him…
November 4, 2008
OK, even though I have said time and time again that I rarely do any posts that are strictly political in nature, mainly because political bloggers are a dime a dozen, great political bloggers are rare, and I don't consider myself anything better than an at best passable political blogger. However…
November 4, 2008
As hard as it is to believe, it's finally here. Election Day. After two years of painful, annoying, surprising, infuriating, and, on rare occasions, uplifting campaigning, it all comes down to this: Voters, alone in little booths, casting ballots that will decide which direction our nation goes for…
November 3, 2008
Once more, it's rapidly approaching that time again. The 99th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle will be landing at Ferret's Cage in less than three days. That means there's still time to get your entries to the Ferret King in time to be included in the blog carnival. The cool thing is that Ferret…
November 3, 2008
Remember the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS)? It's been a long time since I've written much about the AAPS, of course, but refreshing your memory will be easy. It's the ultra-libertarian wingnut medical "association" that routinely scrapes the bottom of the barrel, as far as…
November 2, 2008
I got this e-mail the other day, and I urge everyone who's ever linked to Robert Lancaster's excellent site to do as Tim Farley requests. (While you're at it, you should consider linking to Farley's equally useful What's the Harm?): I'm writing you because your site is one of the top ranked sites (…
November 1, 2008
Thus far, the first decade of the 21st century not been good to that man who is arguably the world's most famous Holocaust denier, David Irving. The decade began its very first year with his crushing defeat in the libel lawsuit he instigated against Holocaust historian Professor Deborah Lipstadt, a…
October 31, 2008
I feel bad. I realize that I've been completely neglecting my Academic Woo Aggregator. You remember my Academic Woo Aggregator, don't you? It was my attempt to compile a near-definitive list of academic medical centers that had "integrated" woo into their divisions or departments of "integrative…
October 30, 2008
I ask this question because I have seen something I have never seen before, something so earth-shattering that I wonder if the very axis of the earth has shifted, something so incredible that I have to pinch myself to make sure that I'm not living some unbelievably bizarre dream. I half expect the…