April 13, 2007
In February of this year Jill Pruetz, an anthropologist with Iowa State University, witnessed Kenyan chimpanzees break off branches from trees, sharpen them using their teeth, and then use these spears to hunt lesser bush babies, a kind of small primate. The bush babies sleep in the hollows of…
April 13, 2007
Having done a lot of trauma coverage in my time (although the last time I covered trauma call was nearly eight years ago), I have to admit that, when I first heard of the motor vehicle collision (I never call such crashes "accidents" because they rarely are) in which New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine…
April 13, 2007
...and how!
Who knew our intrepid mascot liked hockey so much? I wonder if he's Canadian. Maybe so.
April 13, 2007
Believe it or not, it's been almost nine months since, almost on a whim, I first started this little indulgence of mine known as Your Friday Dose of Woo, with some truly fine woo known as quantum homeopathy. Before you know it, we'll be celebrating a full year of woo. (Yes, I know that woo is…
April 12, 2007
The answer is no, given his position on the Kathy Sierra case and the death threats she received and the online savaging to which she was subjected.
Kos attacks calls for a bloggers' code of conduct. This is actually the one point where I tend agree with him. It wouldn't help the situation and…
April 12, 2007
If you ever want to wonder why I'm sometimes of the mind that the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine should be disbanded and its functions distributed among the other Institutes of the NIH, you just have to consider the sorts of woo-filled studies (like the Gonzalez protocol…
April 12, 2007
It's that time again, and Geek Counterpoint has delivered the woo for you (and how!) in the 58th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle. Head on over for your fix of rational thought applied liberally to dubious claims, all expertly administered and arranged for your edification.
Next up is previous two-…
April 12, 2007
I sometimes wonder if those doctors who do health segments for various TV news outlets are "real" doctors, given the sorts of things they actually say. Oh, Dr. Dean Edell is a pretty evidence-based guy most of the time (one of his finest moments being his takedown of Dr. Lorraine Day on the air),…
April 11, 2007
This particular woman makes the case that she deserves the title:
I think she wins hands down, don't you? She must be one of those pollo-vegetarians. Because, after all, chickens aren't "animals."
April 11, 2007
A brand, spankin' new Tangled Bank has been posted over at fellow ScienceBlogger Tara's Aetiology. It's more science bloggy goodness than you can absorb in one day.
And while we're on the topic of blog carnivals, don't forget that the latest Skeptics' Circle will be appearing at Geek Counterpoint…
April 11, 2007
The latest Grand Rounds, that blog carnival for medicine and health care issues, has been posted at the ironically named (I hope) Dr. Dork. Check it out.
April 11, 2007
It's been a couple of weeks since we last checked in with The DCA Site, that dubious advertising site for BuyDCA.com, where a chemist named Jim Tassano sells to desperate cancer patients non-pharmaceutical grade and non-FDA-approved dichloroacetate, the small molecule chemotherapeutic agent with an…
April 10, 2007
You never touch me anymore. Is it because you think I'm fat? Damon diadema
Scientists have recently witnessed two species of arachnids that caress family members and seem to enjoy snuggling. Two kinds of whip spiders--dime-sized Phrynus marginemaculatus found in Florida and the larger Damon…
April 10, 2007
Today, in case you didn't remember, is World Homeopathy Day, a day for the credulous to celebrate the woo that is homeopathy by celebrating the birthday of the originator of homeopathy, Samuel Hahnemann. I had thought of making a "homeopathic" mention of this great event (in other words, no mention…
April 10, 2007
I don't want to make this blog "all Egnor all the time." I know it's hard to believe, given my posting behavior recently, but really I don't. No matter how much the Discovery Institute's creationist neurosurgeon may embarrass the hell out of me as (I shudder to have to admit) a fellow surgeon, I've…
April 10, 2007
It figures. On the very day that I posted a rather long post about a series of three papers discussing the use of mammography and MRI for screening women for breast cancer, there would have to be another paper relevant to the topic of the early detection of cancer, again in this case breast cancer…
April 9, 2007
I tell ya, ever since I first posted my infamous You Might Be an Altie If..., it seems that everyone wants in on the action. Not that I mind much. I can't honestly take credit for the idea; so it would be silly of me to get upset if someone else uses it.
This time around, it's fellow skeptic…
April 9, 2007
Via Modern Mechanix, from the pages of Popular Mechanics, April 1924:
BEARD IS REMOVED WITH MUD AND USE OF X-RAYS
Shaving beards from men's faces, has been accomplished by a special mudlike paste that is undergoing experiments at the hands of a New York doctor. After the mass has been applied, it…
April 9, 2007
In my last couple of posts on the risks and benefits of ever more sensitive screening tests for various cancers, and in particular breast cancer, I marveled at a a bit of serendipity that had pointed me to a particular old article a mere few days before multiple new papers about breast cancer…
April 8, 2007
Pediatric Grand Rounds is now up over at the abode of one of my favorite medbloggers, Flea. This time around, Flea has chosen a rather--shall we say?--unusual theme around which to organize the festivities.
April 8, 2007
After all the chatter that's been going on throughout ScienceBlogs about Matt Nisbet and Chris Mooney's editorial, Framing Science, published in Science on Friday, I almost thought that there was nothing really left for me to say. Of course, regular readers of this blog know that there's rarely an…
April 7, 2007
Via Terra Sigilatta (who beat me to this one, as I saw the press release yesterday but never got around to blogging about it), we find yet another case of heavy metal contamination of a popular supplement, this time herbal kelp supplements. This discovery was prompted by the investigation of a case…
April 7, 2007
I don't recall how I came across this. Perhaps it was while looking for photos of our intrepid mascot that I don't already have, or perhaps it was to see if anyone else has anything to say about our cheery but strange mascot, the purpose of whose head you really don't want to think too much about…
April 6, 2007
Time flies once again, and, seemingly so soon after the last successful Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle, the next one is fast approaching. This time around, it's going to be hosted at Geek Counterpoint. So get your entries to Lorne by Wednesday, and then join us for yet another entertaining…
April 6, 2007
This one didn't seem big enough to deserve the full Your Friday Dose of Woo treatment, but I certainly don't want to let this additional bit of religious woo go by unnoticed:
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA - March 27, 2007. Regardless of creed, ethnicity, age or culture, throughout history people have…
April 6, 2007
In perusing my Folder of Woo, which is becoming every more crammed with potential targets begging for the tender mercies of Orac in their very own Your Friday Dose of Woo installments, I was wondering which one to pick. After all, it's an embarrassment of riches (if you can call it "riches") in…
April 5, 2007
An "integrative" medical practitioner observes:
I just came from a lecture by a Chinese Prof. who has a cancer hospital in China (Fuda Cancer hospital). What is strange, was it didn't use therapies from China, but rather technologies from the USA. They have cryoablation, photodynamic therapies,…
April 5, 2007
[Note: If you haven't already, you should read PART 1 of this two-part series. It defines several terms that I will be using in this post, and I don't plan on explaining them again, given that they were explained in detail in Part 1. Of course, if you're a medical professional and already know what…
April 4, 2007
The latest Change of Shift, the blog carnival for nursing, has been posted at Emergiblog. Enjoy!
April 4, 2007
Apparently after a long night of drinking, Egyptian fruit bats wake up craving particular types of sugar. In a recent study, Francisco Sanchez from the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (Israel) showed that the bats prefer foods high in the sugar molecule, fructose, after eating slightly fermented…