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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 27, 2010
Now that I've had my new iPhone 4 for nearly four days, I need to know what to do with my old iPhone. One has to wonder: Will it blend? Clearly the iPhone 4 blends.
June 25, 2010
Many are the times when I've complained about how the press reports on science and medicine. I love it when science is reported well, but sadly such examples are far fewer than I'd like to see. In fact, there are times when I feel as though I'm living this in an alternate universe where it's not…
June 24, 2010
Remember Boyd Haley? He's the Professor and former Chairman of the Department of Chemistry at the University of Kentucky whose formerly respectable career tanked because he fell into pseudoscience. For whatever reason, a while back he became enamored first of dental amalgam quackery to the point…
June 24, 2010
...is because I lucked out and my iPhone 4 arrived a day early. Gadget geek that I am, I couldn't resist taking the time I'd normally spend blogging last night to set it up the way I like it. Yes, whenever I get a new smartphone, just as whenever I get a new computer, I like to start from scratch…
June 23, 2010
June is almost over. If you work in an academic medical center, as I do, that can mean only one thing. The new interns are coming, and existing residents will soon be advancing to the next level. The joy! The excitement! The trepidation! And it's not all just the senior residents and the faculty…
June 22, 2010
(NOTE ADDED 12/7/2010: Kim Tinkham has died of what was almost certainly metastatic breast cancer. Also note that, when it was publicized on the Internet and on the blogosphere that Tinkham's cancer gave every indication of having recurred and she was dying, her "practitioner" Robert O. Young…
June 21, 2010
Coming soon: Penn & Teller take on the anti-vaccine movement on an upcoming episode of Penn & Teller: Bullshit! No doubt it will resemble this little preview that Penn himself has taped: Note: Lots of NSFW language. It is, after all, Penn. I will mention one thing. Penn's wrong when he…
June 21, 2010
Over the last few decades, there has been a veritable explosion in the quantity of scientific journals and published papers. It's a veritable avalanche. Some of the reason for this is simply the increase in the number of scientific researchers that has occurred over the last few decades. Another…
June 20, 2010
...and I hope none of you got anything like this. See you all tomorrow...
June 18, 2010
In the wake of President Obama's election, there was a great deal of hope that he would take science-based medicine seriously and, as he promised in his inaugural speech, "restore science to its rightful place." Shortly before Obama's inauguration, in fact, Steve Salzberg proposed that the Obama…
June 17, 2010
If there's one thing that the loons over at the anti-vaccine crank blog Age of Autism might actually be somewhat good at, it's leaping on a news story and trying to liken it to their unshakable pseudoscientific belief that vaccines cause autism. Unfortunately for them (and fortunately for our our…
June 17, 2010
Ozzy Osbourne is, like many rock stars of his advancing age, an amazing creature. Having subjected his body to abuse beyond the ability of most normal people to understand in terms of booze, drugs, and crazy living on the road, like the Energizer Bunny he just keeps going and going and going along…
June 17, 2010
Back in the 1990s when I first dipped my toe into the pool that was Usenet, that massive, wild, and untamed frontier where most online discussion occurred before the rise of the web and later the blogosphere, I was truly a naif. I had no idea--no inkling--of the depths of quackery to which people…
June 16, 2010
I think the message may finally getting through. That message is that it's not always the best strategy to treat cancer aggressively. Don't get me wrong. If I have acute leukemia, I know I'll need the big guns, every bit of chemotherapy appropriate to the disease that modern oncology can throw at…
June 15, 2010
Time and time again, anti-vaccine activists respond to charges of being "anti-vaccine" with a self-righteous wounded whine that goes something like this: "We aren't 'anti-vaccine.' We're pro-safe vaccine." Alternative claims are that they are "vaccine safety watchdogs" and that they'd vaccinate if…
June 15, 2010
I don't know if I need to get out the infamous paper bag or--even worse--the Doctor Doom mask out yet. As you may recall (if you are a long time reader, anyway) is that the mind-numbing stupidity of certain MDs has driven me to want to hide my face in utter shame at the embarrassment caused by my…
June 14, 2010
I've had the immense good fortune to have trained and ultimately become a physician-scientist during a time when the pace of discovery and the paradigm changes in science have occurred just over the course of my career in medicine and science has been staggering. microRNA, the shift from single…
June 13, 2010
Remember my post about the genetics of autism last week? Remember how I predicted that the knives would come out from anti-vaccine loons? My original prediction was that Mark "Not a Doctor Not a Scientist" Blaxill would pull one of his usual brain dead attacks on genetic studies, such as his "…
June 12, 2010
Somehow, this doesn't seem all that far from the truth, except that kitties are cute. The last line, however, is, sadly, all too prescient-sounding. In fact, I'm not sure that it's even funny because the truth hurts. I guess cute kitties make it easier to take. I wonder if they ever remade A Few…
June 11, 2010
I wonder what the loons at Age of Autism will say about this. Actually, I know what they'll say. Whenever a scientific study like the one just published earlier this week the top tier journal Nature, which examines genetic variations (CNVs) associated with autism and autism spectrum disorders (ASDs…
June 10, 2010
Sadly, this video rings all too true:
June 10, 2010
Let's see. Now that I'm back from Chicago, having recently attended a major cancer meeting, not to mention having already blogged about the meeting, what to do next? Sure, the whole thing about Andrew Wakefield finding himself just one step away from appearing on Jeff Rense's or Alex Jones's radio…
June 9, 2010
Thanks to my "friends" at Generation Rescue and Age of Autism, I've learned of something that is so absolutely appropriate, so perfect in its complete perfection (if you know what I mean), it brought a smile to my face. It turns out that anti-vaccine hero and martyr Andrew Wakefield, who has been…
June 9, 2010
Well, I'm home. As I've mentioned before, I attended the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) in Chicago. Although one of the problems with ASCO, at least for surgeons like me, is that it is a meeting completely dominated by medical oncology. Quite frankly, not that…
June 8, 2010
Orac is on his way home from the ASCO meeting in Chicago. Shockingly, he was so busy that he didn't bother to write anything last night, his last night in Chicago. Fortunately, he found something from the archives that's perfect for this occasion. This is something he wrote in 2007, after the last…
June 7, 2010
Orac is currently away at the ASCO meeting in Chicago. Shockingly, he was so busy that he didn't bother to write anything last night. Fortunately, he found something from the archives that's perfect for this occasion. Although it's not about ASCO specifically, ASCO is an even bigger meeting. This…
June 7, 2010
Orac is currently away at the ASCO meeting in Chicago. Shockingly, he was so busy that he didn't bother to write anything last night. Fortunately, he found something from the archives that's perfect for this occasion. This was originally written in 2005 on the "old' Respectful Insolence blog and…
June 6, 2010
I forgot to mention on Friday that I'm currently in Chicago attending the ASCO meeting. It's a lot of fun seeing the latest that science-based medicine has to offer, although ASCO isn't always my cup of tea. The reason is that it's very heavily based in medical oncology and chemotherapy, and there…
June 4, 2010
Since its very inception five years ago, The Huffington Post has been, to steal a phrase from Star Wars, a wretched hive of scum and villainy, at least when it comes to anything resembling medicine. Of course, that's the problem. Very little, if anything, published in HuffPo resembles actual…
June 3, 2010
It occurs to me that I haven't written about this topic in quite a while, but a recent event makes me think that maybe now's the time to revisit this topic. I'm referring to Holocaust denial. Newer readers may not know that part of what got me involved in online discussions back in the late 1990s…