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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

January 7, 2008
Something must be wrong these days with the Chicago Tribune. I've complained about its recent tendency to publish credulous tripe about "alternative" medicine or sympathetic articles about alternative medicine, usually in the form of columns by the ever woo-friendly Julie Deardorff, but also in the…
January 7, 2008
Pity the investigators at the CDC studying whether thimerosal, the mercury-containing preservative pilloried by the antivaccination movement as the cause of autism and everything that is evil in medicine. Three months ago, they published a high profile article in the New England Journal of Medicine…
January 6, 2008
Here's part 1. Here's part II. It's Bill Maher on David Letterman ranting about "toxins," how we are being "poisoned by America," and how your body is trying to produce a "river of mucus" to rid itself of the toxins, all standard tropes of "alternative" medicine and quackery. Sadly, David Letterman…
January 6, 2008
Charlie Anders seeks to answer that very question: (Click on the graph above to go to the full size original graph, which graphs the frequency of stories per season in which the Doctor is portrayed as overthrowing the government or the status quo or foments a rebellion.) Although the arch-…
January 5, 2008
"It's a miracle!" How many times have you heard that one, usually invoked when someone survives serious injuries that would kill most people? Personally, the use of the word grates on me and did even when I was a lot more religious than I am now. Yesterday, it grated on me when I saw this story:…
January 4, 2008
After having to put up with high profile antivaccinationist idiots like Jenny McCarthy and celebrities who are ignorant enough to fall for what the mercury militia are laying down, like Donald Trump, it's nice to see that not all celebrities are twits when it comes to vaccines. Not surprisingly,…
January 4, 2008
Vibrations. After a year and a half of doing Your Friday Dose of Woo every week with only a couple of breaks, it's all I can feel or hear sometimes. Vibrations. What is it about woo and "vibrations," "harmonics," or "waves," anyway? It doesn't matter if it's sound waves or electromagnetic waves…
January 3, 2008
It's 2008. Unfortunately, there don't appear to be any signs that the problems of 2007 as far as rampant credulity and susceptibility to quackery and pseudoscience on the part of the public will be abating this year. Fortunately, we have a remedy--or at least something that can help show you how…
January 3, 2008
The other day, I happened across an Op-Ed article in the New York Times that left me scratching my head at the seeming insanity of the incident it described. The article, written by Dr. Atul Gawande, author of Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science and Better: A Surgeon's Notes on…
January 2, 2008
...and he gets it right here. If only someone with some sanity could actually sit down with Trump, as portrayed in the post above.
January 2, 2008
Any Oklahoma City skeptics out there reading this? I just found an event that could use the presence of some actual science-minded individuals to refute the nonsense that's going to be there. It's an event called Educate Before You Vaccinate, and it's happening on January 19. Looking at the…
January 2, 2008
If the pontifications of Orac are too--shall we say?--insolent for your taste, you'll be happy to know that there's a new group blog in town designed to provide a serious "alternative" voice of reason and science to discuss the claims made in favor of "alternative" medicine. Spearheaded by Steve…
January 2, 2008
Although this may be more up Abel Pharmboy's alley than mine, there was an article in the New York Times yesterday that indirectly demolished one of the favorite claims of advocates of "natural" medicines and cures. Appropriately enough, it appeared in the Business section. It also demonstrated…
January 1, 2008
Regular readers of this blog may remember that I'm a bit of a music critic wannabe. This pretension began very early in the history of this blog and persisted every year. Usually, sometime around the end of the year or the first day of the new year, I'll compile my list of my favorite CDs of the…
January 1, 2008
It's a new year. Overall, 2007 was a good year for Respectful Insolence. When I first started this whole blogging thing, I had no idea that I'd still be at it three years later. Moreover, I had no idea that I'd still be able to produce posts good enough that people still want to read them. Heck, I…
December 31, 2007
Perhaps I spoke too soon when I said that 2007 finished on a good note. I never would have chosen mercury militia recruit Jenny McCarthy as a "woman who inspires us." Let's see. Just because she decided to make claims that she could "cure" her son of autism and that vaccines caused it does not…
December 31, 2007
What better way to finish off 2007 than to look at a most amusing judicial ruling on the admissibility of some of the favorite "expert" witnesses trotted out to try to demonstrate a link between mercury in vaccines and autism. It was issued on December 21 in the case of Blackwell v. Sigma Aldrich,…
December 31, 2007
Given the way that he's so successfully resurrected Doctor Who, I had come to believe that Russell T. Davies could do no wrong. I guess I was wrong: The Daily Post is reporting that comments made by Executive Producer Russell T. Davies at the preview screening of Voyage of the Damned have caused…
December 30, 2007
...from submitting to the Skeptics' Circle! Our latest host, Pal MD at White Coat Underground, has sent up the emergency flare. With a mere three days to go, he's worried that he won't have enough submissions to his Skeptics' Circle to keep up the usual high quality when the Circle lands on…
December 30, 2007
If you think spending the holidays with your family is stressful, imagine what it might be like for the Doctor: By the way, I've managed to check out the Doctor Who Christmas Special. By and large it's pretty good; maybe I'll post a review sometime in the next few days, while I'm taking it fairly…
December 30, 2007
The other day, I posted about how quacks and pseudoscientists seem to find Ron Paul's promise of "health freedom" as irresistible as moths do flame. Now it seems that Ron Paul has another most excellent endorsement to add to that of Stormfront, Dr. Mercola, and Mike Adams, not to mention to the…
December 29, 2007
As if Jenny McCarthy weren't enough stupidity in pushing the alleged "link" between vaccines and autism, it looks as though Donald Trump has joined the fray on the side of pseudoscience: In an interview with Palm Beach Politics, Donald Trump offered a controversial opinion on a new topic: autism.…
December 29, 2007
...I find it rather amazing that after all these months I'm still getting a steady, constant stream of traffic, probably at least a couple of dozen visits a day, to this old post from Your Friday Dose of Woo, all coming from this discussion on the JREF forums. That forum must get a lot of traffic.…
December 28, 2007
Over at A Blog Around the Clock, the mother of fellow ScienceBlogger Bora's is guest blogging. I mention this because she's blogging about a trip to Israel she took in November to attend a conference of Holocaust Child Survivors. I had no idea. So far, there are four parts: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3…
December 28, 2007
Lately, bloggers, including some of my fellow ScienceBloggers, have been expressing various concerns about the phenomenon that is Ron Paul, the Republican candidate who's ridden a wave of discontent to do surprisingly well in the polls leading up to the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primaries.…
December 28, 2007
Orac's circuits have yet to recover from the assault on his logic circuits caused by the über-woo of a couple of weeks ago, coupled with the even more powerful woo two weeks before that. Consequently, in order to marshal additional time scour the Internet for only the finest woo to be featured in…
December 27, 2007
...this is what a troll is on the Internet. Personally, though, I prefer the Flame Warriors version, although I'm not sure that I agree with Mike Reed's characterization of trolls as "generally quite harmless."
December 27, 2007
It's been a while since I've heard anything about Abraham Cherrix, the teen who rejected conventional chemotherapy for Hodgkins' lymphoma in favor of the quackery known as Hoxsey therapy. Ultimately, there was a legal battle resulting in a compromise that allowed Cherrix to pursue "alternative"…
December 27, 2007
It figures. Some of the most interesting questions and posts showed up right before Christmas, just the time when I didn't have time to discuss and (hopefully) expand upon them. Neither, I'm guessing, did anyone else, which is unfortunate because this post was about an issue worth further…
December 26, 2007
The whole post-Christmas thing left me without time to do anything other than a couple of brief bits. Consequently, given Deirdre Imus' two recent appearances on the Huffington Post, I thought it would be as good a time as any to resurrect this post from June 27, 2005. For those of you who haven't…