oracknows

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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

August 12, 2007
While trying to avoid working on my grant yesterday, I was idly flipping channels. I had planned on killing a few minutes while psyching myself up to go back into the Bat Cave that is my office, ignoring a gloriously perfect sunny day with temperatures in the low 80s, to do battle with the grant…
August 11, 2007
This is disturbing. Yesterday, I did a rather light-hearted edition of Your Friday Dose of Woo about "ionic foot detoxification." A reader pointed out that in a story in which Randi had also discussed this woo, there was a comment along the lines of "I think autistic children should really do this…
August 10, 2007
Don't forget, everybody, that the 67th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle is due to land at The Bronze Blog on Thursday, August 16. Bronze Dog will host. As you may know, Bronze Dog is the creator of a great list of "doggerel" commonly used by the credulous to defend pseudoscience or the paranormal.…
August 10, 2007
After over a year of doing Your Friday Dose of Woo, I can't believe I've never come across this one before. Sometimes there's a bit of woo that comes my way that's so off the wall, so unexpected, the claims for which are so unrelated to reality that it startles even me. Moreover, unlike truly over-…
August 9, 2007
Somehow, I don't know how, I managed to wind up on the mailing list of über-woomeister Dr. Joseph Mercola, who's almost as bad as Mike Adams, only less blatantly crazy in pushing conspiracy theories. Yesterday, I received this pitch by e-mail: I've got a quick question for you: How does your…
August 9, 2007
I'm a bit cranky right now. Long time readers are familiar with the logorrhea that usually characterizes this blog. Fans love it; detractors hate it, Some may have noticed a bit of paucity of blogging, at least relatively speaking. There's a good reason for this. Not only was I out of town last…
August 8, 2007
This is an example of a WordPress page, you could edit this to put information about yourself or your site so readers know where you are coming from. You can create as many pages like this one or sub-pages as you like and manage all of your content inside of WordPress.
August 8, 2007
Turns out the monkey isn't the only creature in the forest getting bombed. Check out this video of the African booze tree. Special thanks to Tom Ferriss for finding this clip. Add to: Slashdot del.icio.usredditnewsvineY! MyWeb
August 8, 2007
Check out the Carnival of Healing (which should be called the Carnival of Woo, if this recent edition is any example). They're looking for hosts, you know. Perhaps I should volunteer. Or maybe one of my favorite skeptical bloggers would volunteer. I know, it's an evil thought.
August 8, 2007
I learned the other day that one of the most renowned historians of the Holocaust, Raul Hilberg, passed away at the age of 81: WILLISTON, Vt. --Dr. Raul Hilberg, a world renowned Holocaust scholar has died. He was 81. Hilberg, a professor emeritus of political science at the University of Vermont,…
August 8, 2007
&uotI've been on call and grant writing, both of which have put a major crimp in my blogging time, preventing my usual daily magnum opus and leaving me reposts and pithy link-and-comment posts, at least for today. Since having become a little irritated by comparisons to Nazis by a certain…
August 7, 2007
The third season of Doctor Who is over. There's nothing on the horizon for many months (such as the return of Doctor Who or Torchwood) that's interesting enough to me coming out of the U.K. that I'd go to the trouble of firing up BitTorrent to check it out, rather than wait until it somehow finds…
August 7, 2007
After a long run of arguing against global warming and indoor smoking bans, it appears that our favorite Libertarian comic with a penchant for bad arguments and ad hominem attacks on scientists has temporarily left the field of blog combat in a huff of "giving up" that reminds me of a certain Black…
August 6, 2007
Seen on the road on my way into work this morning: I passed a bus going the other way. I noticed that it had a prominent sign over its front window scrolling, "NOT IN SERVICE." We both stopped at the light, the bus on the other side going the other way from me. I then noticed that the sign switched…
August 6, 2007
I hate flying these days. I'm almost certainly not alone in this dislike of what air travel has become. After all, between widespread flight cancellations and delays, service that would make even cell phone tech support seem attentive and pleasant by comparison, and the necessary but degrading…
August 5, 2007
Now I remember why breakdancing got on my nerves in the 1980s: (Via Attuworld.) Thus endeth the silliness for this rainy Sunday.
August 5, 2007
...Eneman! I was remiss in July. It happens that I totally forgot to post the monthly feature that has become a tradition over the last two years of blogging. Oh, I tried to make up for it by resurrecting a rather amusing EneMan article from nearly two years ago as an installment of Your Friday…
August 4, 2007
In case you haven't seen it yet... Sad. I can't believe Behe is still using the mousetrap analogy for "irreducible complexity" when the very concept has been so thoroughly debunked over the last several years.
August 4, 2007
I really, really wish the Discovery Institute would stop putting out idiocy like this: We have blogged in the past about the growing numbers of doctors who are skeptical of Darwinian evolution to explain the complexity of life. Those numbers are continuing to grow, and conesquently doctors are…
August 3, 2007
So what do you do when you didn't have time to write something new? Well, you could leave the blog blank, which is anathema to me) or you could do the time-honored space-filling technique valued by bloggers everywhere once they reach a certain level of traffic. Yep! It's one of the very rare times…
August 3, 2007
Michael Behe, that Don Quixote of "intelligent design" who never tires of tilting at windmills of "fatal flaws" in evolutionary theory that he think he's identified, did quite a bit of tilting at HIV in his book. Watch his blathering taken down by a pre-graduate student named Abbie. It's so good it…
August 3, 2007
Unfortunately, I was way too busy this week to come up with a new edition of Your Friday Dose of Woo. However, there's still stuff to be mined from the ancient history of this blog, stuff that most of you, my readers, have probably not seen. This one, for instance, dates back nearly two years (…
August 2, 2007
This week, the 66th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle just so happens to coincide with the 66th Meeting of the International Society of Skeptics; so they decided to hold a joint meeting. This week's host, Mark Hoofnagle, has the abstract book all lined up for you to peruse. Excellent stuff. If only…
August 2, 2007
While I'm back on the topic of vaccines again (and that topic seems to me less and less rancorous these days, not because antivaccination "activists" have gotten any less loony but because the smoking cranks, at least the ones showing up on my blog these days, threaten to make antivaccinationists…
August 1, 2007
How low will Andrew Wakefield supporters go in protecting the discredited and disgraced doctor whose shoddy and biased research sparked an antivaccination hysteria that led to falling vaccination rates in the U.K. and the subsequent return of measles and mumps? This low. Yes, it's a Wakefield…
August 1, 2007
Mike, Mike, Mike, why did you have to show me this story? Don't you know that stories like this drive me crazy? Basically, the story from Boston Now reports on how more and more parents in are claiming religious exemptions to vaccination in Massachusetts: More Massachusetts parents are sending…
July 31, 2007
Since this seems to be the day for applying Respectful Insolence⢠to people who say stupid things about me... Everyone knows that Dean Esmay and I don't exactly see eye to eye on a lot of things. Indeed, it could be safely said that Dean has nothing but contempt for me. It doesn't bother me. After…
July 31, 2007
I was going to write about a recent study that purports to claim that smoking pot causes schizophrenia that's been making the rounds lately. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you see it), this week's host of the Skeptics' Circle, Mark Hoofnagle, beat me to it. Can you say, "…
July 31, 2007
A couple of weeks ago, inspired by a somewhat drunken encounter two weeks prior, against my better judgment, I waded into the evidence supporting the contention that secondhand smoke is harmful to health, increasing the risk of heart disease and lung cancer in workers chronically exposed to it. In…
July 30, 2007
If you want to know how clueless our current President is about healthcare and the uninsured, just check out this quote from a speech he gave recently: The immediate goal is to make sure there are more people on private insurance plans. I mean, people have access to health care in America. After…