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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

October 14, 2008
Blog friend Dr. Val Jones has moved. She's no longer blogging at Revolution Health but has instead gone solo, blogging at Getting Better with Dr. Val. She's also doing a weekly gig at Science-Based Medicine now, and indeed has started out with a bang. Let's put it this way: There are few bloggers I…
October 14, 2008
OK, I give up. I hadn't planned on blogging about this because I thought I had already taken care of this woo before. Well, not exactly this woo, but a related woo of which this new issue is just a warmed over more woo-ified version. Indeed, I had even considered it as a candidate to be the first "…
October 13, 2008
Remember Sandy Szwarc of Junkfood Science? It's been a long time since we've last encountered her. Indeed, it was last year when there developed a debate on whether her posts were suitable for the Skeptics' Circle. At the time, I was conflicted. In many ways, Ms. Szwarc seemed to be a skeptic--at…
October 12, 2008
NOTE: This post, which is related to a discussion of Dr. Paul Offit's Book Autism's False Prophets, originally appeared over at The ScienceBlogs Book Club. However, now that the book club for this particular book has concluded, I am free to repost it here for those who may not have seen it and to…
October 11, 2008
NOTE: This post, which is related to a discussion of Dr. Paul Offit's Book Autism's False Prophets, originally appeared over at The ScienceBlogs Book Club. However, now that the book club for this particular book has concluded, I am free to repost it here for those who may not have seen it and to…
October 11, 2008
NOTE: This review of Dr. Offit's book Autism's False Prophets originally appeared over at The ScienceBlogs Book Club. However, now that the book club for this particular book has concluded, I am free to repost it here for those who may not have seen it and to archive it as one of my own posts.…
October 11, 2008
The bastards...
October 10, 2008
...Dr. John Kiely, a.k.a. EpiWonk, will school you otherwise. (I had to attend a function for work last night; so no new insolence for you right now. Maybe later. Hard as it is to believe, I do sometimes have to let my job interfere with my blogging. Fortunately, I've been meaning to plug Dr. Kiely…
October 9, 2008
The relentless march to Skeptics' Circle 100 continues, this time around with Evolved Rationalist over at Evolved and Rational. It's all for the lulz and the mudkip. What it in fact does is make me realize that I'm not as hip to the latest Internet stuff as I thought, because I had no idea what…
October 9, 2008
Well that didn't take long, did it? Three days ago, I described a study that I had noticed in the October 1 issue of Cancer Research that described an animal study that strongly suggested that vitamin C administered at sufficiently high doses may interfere with the action of multiple…
October 8, 2008
Here we go again. It seems just yesterday that I was casting a skeptical eye on yet another dubious acupuncture study. OK, it wasn't just yesterday, but it was less than two weeks ago when I discussed why a study that purported to show that acupuncture worked as well as drug therapy for hot flashes…
October 7, 2008
...it'll be because the flu vaccine poisoned me, of course! That's right. Today I got my flu shot, complete with thimerosal and formaldehyde! I do put my money where my mouth is, so to speak. No word on whether there was any of the dreaded Polysorbate 80 in the vaccine, though. Oh, well. Maybe next…
October 7, 2008
On Friday, while discussing what is perhaps the aspect of Autism's False Prophets that is at the same time the most important set of observations (namely, how the media and government miscommunicate science and how the public seems hardwired to misunderstand science) and its most glaring omission (…
October 7, 2008
For women undergoing menopause, hot flashes are a real problem. In my specialty, as I've pointed out before, women undergoing treatment for breast cancer are often forced into premature menopause by the treatments to which we subject them. It can be chemotherapy, although far more often it's the…
October 6, 2008
...with the 97th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle, which is due to be hosted at Evolved and Rational on Thursday, October 9. That's less than three days away, folks. There's still a couple of days left to get your skeptical entries submitted to Evolved Rationalist. So, if you've procrastinated thus…
October 6, 2008
Sometimes I have to look for blog ideas, trolling through various alternative medicine sites, medical news sites, or science news feeds or my medical and science journals. Sometimes ideas fall on me seemingly out of the blue. This is one of the latter situations. This time around, as I do twice a…
October 6, 2008
As you may remember, the evening after the Hollywood face of the antivaccine P.R. machine Jenny McCarthy was scheduled to take part in a web chat. At the time, I suggested sending questions in to the Oprah website, to see if any would get through. I'm sure there was some serious screening and…
October 5, 2008
I'm still buried working on next week's talk and my part of the center grant. Fortunately, Saturday Night Live provides some temporary entertainment until I can get out from under the pile. Once again Tina Fey nails it, especially the "maverick" part. While watching the debate last week, by the end…
October 4, 2008
Unfortunately, I'm going to be ensconced in my Sanctum Sanctorum most of the day, pounding out text far less fun than the text I like to pound out for Respectful Insolence. However, I have to admit that this video sums up the attitude behind a whole lot of woo that I like to apply a skeptical…
October 3, 2008
...at The ScienceBlogs Book Club has been posted. Go forth and enjoy. As always for these Book Club Posts, no comments are allowed here. Got a response? Hate my guts? Think I'm in the pocket of Big Pharma, Big Government, and the Illuminati, too? At least for this post, say it over there!
October 3, 2008
You can tell I'm really busy when I fall behind my reading of the scientific literature to the point where I miss an article highly relevant to topics I'm interested in, be they my laboratory research, clinical interests, or just general interests, such as translational research. As you know, I…
October 2, 2008
Note: The central idea for this post is the same as that of a post I did a few months ago. However, given some of the assertions and comments made by Dr. Offit in Autism's False Prophets, I thought they were worth discussing again, especially given how many readers are around who aren't regular…
October 2, 2008
Given that über-quackery booster Mike Adams decided to compare "Western medicine" to the subprime mortgage mess, I wondered what the real cause of this financial meltdown was. Leave it to our friends in the right wing blogosphere and media to find the real culprit: The Community Reinvestment Act.…
October 2, 2008
After having posted about Jenny McCarthy, my brain hurt so much from the neuron-apoptosing idiocy that she always delivers that I decided I needed to move on to something that wouldn't assault my reason and quite so much. So I headed on over to that uber-repository of quackery and paranoid…
October 1, 2008
I guess that since my resistance failed, and I couldn't resist posting yesterday about the burning stupid that is Jenny McCarthy and her arrogance of ignorance in claiming that vaccines caused her son's autism and her campaigning to "Green Our Vaccines" (in reality, a smokescreen to hide her…
October 1, 2008
...has been posted over at The ScienceBlogs Book Club. Head on over. As will be the case for all my posts at the Book Club, please leave comments there, not here. Thanks.
October 1, 2008
Please allow me to introduce myself, I'm a man of wealth and taste... Well, not really. I might have one of the two. Or not. Be that as it may, I'm Orac, and I blog regularly at Respectful Insolence. In the more than two and a half years I've been with ScienceBlogs (not to mention the more than a…
October 1, 2008
Readers may be wondering why I haven't written about Jenny McCarthy's latest brain dead outburst against Amanda Peet. (Actually, brain dead is too kind a description of it, given that Jenny's retort in essence boils down to her having an "angry mob" on her side making Amanda "completely wrong.") It…
October 1, 2008
Just a quick announcement here: The ScienceBlogs Book Club is back up and running, and this time the book under discussion is the latest by that Dark Lord of Vaccination himself, that Darth Vader to the antivaccinationist Luke Skywalker, otherwise known as Satan Incarnate to Jenny McCarthy, J.B.…
October 1, 2008
When I first started blogging, I liked to refer to myself as a booster of evidence-based medicine (EBM). These days, I'm not nearly as likely to refer to myself this way. It's not because I've become a woo-meister of course. Even a cursory reading of this blog would show that that is most…