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

June 5, 2014
Quacks really hate Wikipedia. It's understandable, really. Wikipedia has some fairly tight standards regulating its form and content. Quacks, thinking that because anybody can edit Wikipedia articles it must mean that they can edit the entries on their favorite bit of woo to their hearts' content…
June 4, 2014
Not surprisingly, being a guy who leans mildly left, I like The Daily Show. Jon Stewart and his writers are incredibly adept at skewering all manner of bovine excrement, be it political, scientific, or otherwise. In particular, the way Stewart and company skewered the American Council on Science…
June 3, 2014
It's always jarring when I go to a scientific meeting, in this case the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting, imbibe the latest clinical science on cancer, and then check back to see what the quacks are doing. On the other hand, there was a session at this year's ASCO on "…
June 2, 2014
I happen to be out of town right now, attending the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Chicago. It's been a more—shall we say?—eventful trip than anticipated, which is why at my not-so-super-secret other blog we have a guest post today and here I will (probably) be…
May 29, 2014
I'm a bit torn today. On the one hand, it makes me cringe when pundits write inflammatory articles blaming Jenny McCarthy for measles outbreaks. Yes, I know that I once did the same thing myself, but, as much as antivaccinationists dislike me, I've actually toned it down a bit when it comes to that…
May 28, 2014
Being a cancer surgeon, I realize that my tendency is to view my blogging material through the prism of cancer, particularly breast cancer, my specialty. it's easy to forget that there are diseases every bit as horrible, some arguably even more so than the worst cancer. When I think of such…
May 28, 2014
Although I'm a translational researcher, I'm also a surgeon. That was my first and primary training and only later did I decide to get my PhD during my residency, when the opportunity to do so with a decent stipend presented itself. From my perspective, clinical research in surgery is difficult,…
May 26, 2014
Of all the clueless antivaccinationist out there, one stands out as being particularly dangerous to public health. That person is the antivaccine reporter whom I've periodically been forced to castigate ever since around 2007 when she laid down such a seethingly hot bit of napalm-grade antivaccine…
May 26, 2014
Regular readers might be wondering why my output was—shall we say?—less extensive last week than it usually is. I even skipped a weekday and then followed it up with a recycled post from my not-so-super-secret other blog, altered to be a bit more, yes, Insolent. The answer is a single word: Grants…
May 22, 2014
Pretty much everyone who's gotten through junior high recognizes the line from the William Shakespeare play Romeo and Juliet, when Juliet says, "What's in a name? that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd, retain that dear…
May 21, 2014
Well, it snuck up on me again, the way it has a tendency to do every year. Maybe it's because Memorial Day is so early this year. Maybe it's because there's just so much work to do this week given the multiple grant deadlines. Whatever the case, it just dawned on my last night that today is the…
May 19, 2014
May I just say something again? (Actually, it's my blog; so I'll say it if I want to regardless of whether you want me to or not.) You know that "hypothesis" that vaccines cause autism, the one that has been at the core of the modern antivaccine movement over the last 15 years or so? Well, it's not…
May 18, 2014
I hadn't really planned on writing again about everyone's favorite conspiracy theorist and promoter of quackery, Mike Adams, at least not so soon after the last time I did it, which was only last week after Adams appeared on Dr. Oz's daytime television show to push his "laboratory." Adams, as you…
May 16, 2014
As seems to happen more frequently, Orac has had his attention wholly taken up by contemplating a black hole. (Actually, he's at a medical conference on quality care in breast cancer.) Consequently, after a four and a half hour drive to the hotel, dinner out with the conference staff, and preparing…
May 15, 2014
Over the years, the criticism of "evidence-based medicine" (EBM) that I have repeated here and that I and others have repeated at my not-so-super-secret other blog is that its levels of evidence relegate basic science considerations to the lowest level evidence and elevate randomized clinical trial…
May 14, 2014
Sometimes, when you're blogging, serendipity strikes. Sometimes this takes the form of having something appear related to something you just blogged about. Yesterday, I discussed one of the biggest supporters of quackery on the Internet, Mike Adams, a.k.a. the Health Ranger, proprietor of…
May 12, 2014
Over the years, I've often likened alternative medicine to a religion—or even a cult. Basically, it requires belief in a set of precepts that have at best little and more commonly no evidence to support them that is often accompanied by magical thinking that a god-substitute, be it nature, one's…
May 11, 2014
Besides yesterday being Mothers' Day yesterday, I had a lot of grant stuff to do, which means that this one will be a quickie. On Saturday, a reader sent me a link to one of the most useful sites I've ever encountered. I realize that over the weekend it's spread around the skeptical blogosphere…
May 9, 2014
There's a certain category of posts that I like to call (to myself, anyway) "taking care of business" posts. Usually, it's a post about something that I missed the first time around but has, for some reason, reappeared on my radar screen or something that I wish I had written about when it first…
May 8, 2014
One of the themes of this blog since the very beginning of this blog is the threat to scientific medicine represented by a phenomenon that I like to call quackademic medicine. Although I did not coin the term, I frequently use the term and have done my best to popularize it among skeptics to…
May 7, 2014
If there's a story I neglected to mention last week that I should have, it's that Andrew Wakefield is being a bully again, trying to use legal intimidation to silence his critics, namely Forbes.com blogger Emily Willingham. Of course, Wakefield has done this so many times that the fact that he's…
May 5, 2014
Dr. David L. Katz is apparently unhappy with me. You remember Dr. Katz, don't you? If you don't, I'll remind you momentarily. If you do, you won't be surprised. Let me explain a bit first how Dr. Katz recently became aware of me again. A couple of weeks ago, I posted a short (for me) piece about…
May 4, 2014
A week ago or so, I was perusing my Google Alerts, along with various blogs and news websites, looking for something to blog about, when I noticed a disturbance in the pseudoscience Force. It's a phenomenon I've noticed many times before from a wide variety of cranks and quacks, but it all boils…
May 2, 2014
I've often written of "black holes of stupid" that threaten to rupture the fabric of the space-time continuum, so dense and full of stupid are they. Such black holes tend to come from places like the wretched hive of scum and antivaccine quackery known as Age of Autism, the wretched hive of scum…
May 1, 2014
Yesterday, the CDC held a Twitter party for National Infant Immunization Week, which is, conveniently enough, this week. Our old "friend" Ginger Taylor tried to call in her squadron of flying antivaccine monkeys to fling poo at what should have been a celebration of the success of vaccines; so I…
April 30, 2014
Bat Signal time! Here's a quickie that I can't resist publicizing. Antivaccinationists appear to be planning on crashing the CDC's Twitter party for National Infant Immunization Week, which will take place at 1 PM EDT today. Here's our "friend" Ginger Taylor promoting the hashtag #CDCvax to her…
April 30, 2014
A couple of Sundays ago (Easter, to be precise), my wife and I were sitting around yesterday reading the Sunday papers and perusing the Internet (as is frequently our wont on Sunday mornings), when I heard a contemptuous harrumph coming from her direction. She then pointed me to an article in…
April 28, 2014
And now for something completely different (sort of). Somehow, I totally forgot that the week of April 26 to May 3 is National Infant Immunization Week (NIIW), an annual observance to highlight the importance of protecting infants from vaccine-preventable diseases and celebrate the achievements of…
April 27, 2014
Naturopathy is a pseudodiscipline that resembles a Chinese menu of quackery, in which naturopaths select one from column A and two from column B, with each column containing a list of modalities ranging from pure quackery like homeopathy and traditional Chinese medicine to mundane modalities that…
April 25, 2014
I was torn about what to blog about today. There were lots of things floating around that caught my eye and appear worthy of of a little taste of Insolence, either Respectful or not-so-Respectful, so much so that I couldn't decide. None of them really stuck out. Then I saw this news story pop up in…