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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 20, 2007
I can't say I saw this one coming, but it turns out that Albus Dumbledore is gay: Harry Potter author JK Rowling has revealed that one of her characters, Hogwarts school headmaster Albus Dumbledore, is gay. She made her revelation to a packed house in New York's Carnegie Hall on Friday, as part of…
October 20, 2007
I must lead a sheltered life, at least when it comes to the creationism-evolution wars. Sure, I'm more than aware about how much creationists and their more common (these days, at least) bastard offspring "intelligent design" creationists like to cherry pick, twist, and mangle data to make it seem…
October 19, 2007
Don't forget, once again the time is fast approaching. Soon yet another installment of the Skeptics' Circle will be upon us. In fact, it's less than a week away and due to land at the quackometer blog on Thursday, October 25. Our host this time has achieved a fair amount of notoriety by being the…
October 19, 2007
DNA is an amazing molecule. How evolution could have, over eons, fashioned such an amazingly simple yet complex method of storing biological information and coding the proteins that carry out the functions of life is one of the great wonders of biology. Harnessing the power of DNA, through genetic…
October 18, 2007
PZ seems to think that the whole "LOL" thing has gone too far. He may be right. In fact, I've even commented on it before. Even though I have a bit of trouble wrapping my mind around the whole "LOLCats" phenomenon and its various bizarre spinoffs, I do have to admit that I've found one LOL spinoff…
October 18, 2007
Whatever criticisms I may have had for prominent atheists like Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris otherwise, one area that I'm totally down with both of them on is their criticism of the undue respect and consideration we as a society give to religious ideas. This consideration is rarely, if ever, based…
October 17, 2007
Via Health Care Renewal, I've learned of a study that, certain people may be surprised to learn, troubles me. Published yesterday in JAMA, it is, as far as I know, the most comprehensive quantification of one type of tie between industry and academia, specifically how many department chairs have…
October 17, 2007
One of my favorite phenomena that represents better than perhaps any other how humans are wired to look for patterns, whether there is a pattern there or not, is the phenomenon known as pareidolia. As a Catholic-turned-sort-of-heathen, in particular I like Virgin Mary pareidolia, and have blogged…
October 17, 2007
I've written before about how one of the favorite tactics of those who do not like my insistence on applying skepticism, science, and critical thinking to the claims of alternative medicine or my refusal to accept a dichotomy between "alternative" and "conventional" medicine is to try so smear me…
October 16, 2007
I know, I've been a bad blogger about this lately, but better late than never. A couple of blog carnivals for you: surgeXperiences #106 Cancer Research Blog Carnival #2 Grand Rounds, vol. 4, no. 4
October 16, 2007
Work and a conference intervene to prevent a fresh dose of Respectful Insolence today. Fortunately, there's still classic Insolence from the archives that hasn't been moved over to the new blog. This one originally appeared on March 7, 2005. The short answer is: Yes. The long answer is below. When…
October 16, 2007
Work and a conference intervene to prevent a fresh dose of Respectful Insolence today. Fortunately, there's still classic Insolence from the archives that hasn't been moved over to the new blog. This amusing little trifle originally appeared on August 25, 2005. Well, I'm back. Yes, I know I blogged…
October 15, 2007
It's rare that one sees an editorial this spot on, but it happened a couple of days ago in The Washington Post: The debate over vaccine litigation has thus shifted from a presumption of innocence to a presumption of guilt. While the number of major studies that have failed to find any substantive…
October 15, 2007
About a week ago, I wrote about how the wooiest of woo, reiki, has infiltrated one of the best academic trauma centers in the U.S. In it, I lamented that I was feeling increasingly alone in being disturbed by this infiltration of religious pseudoscience into bastions of scientific medicine.…
October 15, 2007
Today is a very sad day in the autism blogosphere. The news I am going to discuss saddens me and should sadden anyone concerned with autism, particularly in combating the antivaccination hysteria and the outright quackery that flows from it promulgated by so many these days, from J. B. Handley to…
October 14, 2007
Yes indeed, if you ever want to cite any of the pearls of brilliance laid down on a regular basis here, you can. Heck, you can even cite comments on blogs! So now you know. Here's a sample citation.
October 14, 2007
About a week ago, I posted about a truly execrably credulous article on alternative medicine published at CNN.com, which basically took a panel of true believers and asked them which five alternative medicine modalities had the best evidence to show that they "work." Now, Steve Novella weighs in.…
October 14, 2007
I was so busy mentioning how the Society of Homeopaths was using legal threats to try to shut down the free speech rights of the host of the next Skeptics' Circle, Le Canard Noir, that I forgot to mention that he also turned me on to a great web comic. The comic, Cectic, is highly unusual in that…
October 13, 2007
Will Smith is the last man on earth. The movie is directed by Ridley Scott. The last take on this story (Richard Matheson's post-apocalyptic I Am Legend), The Omega Man, is one of my all time favorite science fiction movies. (Yes, I know it didn't follow the story that closely, but it stood on its…
October 13, 2007
I don't do this very often, but this picture of Pope Benedict XVI struck me as amusing: One suggested caption is here. Not bad, but surely my readers can do better than that. Add your own caption!
October 13, 2007
The Skeptical Surfer informs me of a rather disturbing programming decision by PBS: I first caught wind of the autism film "Beautiful Son" through the surfing community. Surf filmmaker Don King has an autistic son. Being a filmmaker, Don always has a video camera at hand and has documented his "…
October 12, 2007
Knowing a certain recurring character on this blog, I so wish I had the time to take a trip into New York City on Sunday afternoon to participate in this. How do you plan to spend next weekend? With 200 zombies. Doing Yoga. In New York. * Tattered clothes. Severed Limbs. Blood. Guts. Brains. The…
October 12, 2007
Although his taste in music is questionable at best, Snowball the Cockatoo definitely knows how to get down and get funky. I can't say I've ever seen anything like this before. Now maybe if we introduced Snowball to some old Parliament-Funkadelic. Tear the roof off the sucker, Snowball, and give up…
October 12, 2007
Woo-meisters will not be pleased. While perusing this week's Skeptics' Circle, I was reminded of something that I had meant to post about a couple of days ago. I don't know how he did it or where he got it, but somehow he has found the Holy of Holies for woos everywhere. He found The Woo Handbook.…
October 12, 2007
Regular readers of this blog are probably aware of my general opinion about Reiki and other "energy healing" modalities. In short, they're woo, pure and simple. Consequently, one might reasonably ask why I've never featured the woo that is Reiki in Your Friday Dose of Woo. There's a simple…
October 11, 2007
One of the biggest complaints from alternative medicine practitioners is that some vast cabal, presumably made up big pharma, the CDC, the NIH, the AMA, and "conventional" doctors, is "suppressing" alternative medicine. Yes, true believers like, say, Mike Adams will claim that big pharma is going…
October 11, 2007
Yes, it's that time again, time for the latest edition of the Skeptics' Circle to land on the blogosphere like a nuclear explosion of reason, rationality, and science designed to demolish the credulity that is so rampant. OK, I'm exaggerating a bit, but we here at the Skeptics' Circle do try to do…
October 11, 2007
I should have guessed. Leave it to uber-crank (a. k. a. One Crank To Rule Them All) Mike Adams, the "intellect" behind what is perhaps the crankiest website known to humankind (at least when it comes to medicine), NewsTarget.com, to try to slime Breast Cancer Awareness Month. As fellow…
October 10, 2007
Here we are, a third of the way into Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and I haven't yet written a piece about breast cancer. Given that it's my primary surgical specialty, perhaps some readers were wondering why not. Truth be told, I've always been a bit ambivalent about Breast Cancer Awareness month…
October 10, 2007
One of the most important responsibilities of health care workers and hospitals is to protect the privacy of the patients for whom they care. Unfortunately, in the case of George Clooney's recent hospitalization for injuries sustained in a motorcycle crash, a consequence of electronic medical…