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.
Hoo boy.
Via The Poorman Institute and an anti-Holocaust denial mailing list that I belong to, I've learned of an analogy so breathtakingly bad that I have a hard time not blogging about it, mainly because it relates to a topic that I'm very interested in (Holocaust denial) and a related topic that…
I've said it before and I'll say it again: The war in Iraq has to be the worst foreign policy mistake the U.S. has made in my lifetime. Certainly it's the worst foreign policy mistake that I can remember (I wasn't old enough to remember the Gulf of Tonkin resolution that got the U.S. more deeply…
A special Fourth of July edition of Grand Rounds has been posted at RangelMD. This time around, given the holiday, Dr. Rangel has arranged the posts as a theme, namely a focus on the problems in the U.S. health care system and suggestions of ways to fix them. There's a lot of good analysis to…
Besides our current President, the other factor that has done perhaps the most to drive me from the Republican Party over the last decade has been its falling under the sway of Christian fundamentalists who want to impose their view of morality, religion, and Christianity on the nation as law. Of…
This article originally appeared on July 4, 2005.
Back in May, I was in Bethesda at a meeting. Because of my interest in World War II history and because I hadn't been to Washington since its completion, I was very interested in seeing the World War II Memorial; so one afternoon I hopped on the…
Hard as it is to believe, that time is almost upon us again. This Thursday, July 6, the latest Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle will appear yet again, as it does every two weeks. This time around, the host is LBBP at The Skeptic Rant. You still have a couple of days before the deadline Wednesday…
I used to like The Cancer Blog. I really did. It was one of the first medical blogs I discovered many months ago when I first dipped my toe into the blogosphere. Indeed, less than two months after I started blogging, one of The Cancer Blog's bloggers then, Dr. Leonardo Faoro, even invited me to…
On the weekend, fellow ScienceBloggers seem prone to mass hysteria, taking various silly Internet tests. Even I, Orac, have succumbed to such temptations. I wasn't going to succumb to this one, as Grrlscientist, PZ, Afarensis, Chris, and Bora have, but then I saw the result.
Using the same…
The guys over at Medgaget are guys after my own heart. After commenting on a dubious-sounding device called the emWave Personal Stress Reliever, which, as its makers claim, is Scientifically Validated:
Stress creates incoherence in our heart rhythms. However, when we are in a state of high heart…
This just cracked me up this morning:
NEW YORK - Kevin Trudeau, the million-selling author, infomercial star and convicted felon, swears that his new health guide, "More Natural 'Cures' Revealed," is 100 percent true.
Make that 100 percent true "in essence."`
"My point is I don't want to be caught…
I sort of expected some attacks when I posted yesterday yesterday about how physicians' incomes have been steadily falling. After all, whenever Kevin, M.D. does similar posts, people with--shall we say?--issues regarding physicians often come out in droves to post nasty comments, just as they tend…
While thinking about ways to make the blog better, I wondered if I should emulate some of my colleagues, many of whom have regular features every week, often on Friday. And, since I usually get a little less serious on Fridays anyway (and, because traffic seems to fall off 50% or more anyway…
A new study suggests that, adjusted for inflation, physicians' incomes are, by and large, falling:
Doctors may be well off compared with the bulk oftheir patients, but a new study says fees physicians get from the government and private insurers aren't keeping up with inflation.
Last week, the…
Earlier this week, I was in Washington to attend my first ever NIH study section as an actual reviewer. It was definitely an illuminating experience, and overall I left with, believe it or not, more faith in the system the NIH uses to determine how grant money is doled out. Maybe I'll become more…
Damn you, Kathleen.
Every time I think that I can give the whole mercury/autism thing a rest for a while and move on to less infuriating pastures, you keep finding things that keep dragging me back to the pit of pseudoscience inhabited by Dr. Mark Geier and his son David. The first time around,…
One year ago yesterday, a turd flew, the first of many to come.
A new skeptic had arrived in the blogosphere, and he called himself (appropriately enough, given his propensity for lobbing fecalgrams at the credulous) The Pooflinger.
I feel real bad that I missed his blogiversary because of…
There's a lot of bad history out there. People abuse and misuse history all the time for their own ideological or political ends. Sometimes people are just ignorant of history. Fortunately, in the blogosphere, there's an antidote: The Carnival of Bad History. Jonathan has posted The Carnival of…
Busy at NIH Study section today, I didn't have time to compose anything extensive. (And there is most definitely something that needs a little Respectful Insolence going on; unfortunately, it will have to wait until tomorrow to receive it.) Fortunately, I had some thing in reserver for just such an…
I've written several times about two young victims of what is normally a highly treatable cancer (Hodgkin's lymphoma) and how, with their parents' support, they have jeopardized their lives by choosing alternative therapies. The first, Katie Wernecke, was initially taken from her family by the…
Lord Runolfr recently reminded me of a bit of wisdom, courtesy of the Doctor (fourth Doctor, played by Tom Baker) from the episode entitled The Face of Evil. Here's the quote:
You know, the very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common. They don't alter their views to fit the facts.…
About two weeks ago, I did a brief post about a Lithuanian guy whose blood alcohol level was beyond what would kill most mortal men but who was fully conscious and nominally able to drive. I facetiously referred to it as "one quarter of my heritage at its finest," given that I'm one quarter…
Via Black Triangle, I've come across an article about a real medical hero, a man responsible for the development of many of the vaccines we have today. Indeed, it can be argued that this man, Dr. Maurice Hillman, may have saved more lives than any other physician in history. Those who remember him…
While we're on the topic of Holocaust deniers again, here's something on the lighter side...
I thought I'd seen everything. Then, via Improbable Research, I found something truly strange.
Are you ready for....Hitler Cats? It's a blog dedicated to cats that look like Hitler. I have to tell you,…
Holocaust deniers sometimes refer to the Holocaust as the "Holohoax," as if the whole thing were one huge hoax perpetrated on the world by Jews. Indeed, if you have the stomach to dive into the deepest, darkest, most disgusting parts of the Internet, where Holocaust deniers freely spew their lies,…
In the light of recently discovered possible chicanery on the part of Mark Geier and his dubious IRB, I found this report by John Leavitt very interesting:
My interest in inserting bacterial genes into mammalian cells stemmed from a paper published in Nature in 1971 by NIH scientists, Carl Merril,…
The latest Tangled Bank has been posted. Go get your science fix there.
Over at Emergiblog, a new nursing blog carnival (Change of Shift) has been inaugurated with Volume 1, Number 1.
