oracknows

Profile picture for user oracknows
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

May 9, 2009
...because they blog under the shadow of the United Kingdom's insane libel laws. Witness this travesty of a ruling on the libel case against Simon Singh by the British Chiropractic Association, as related by Jack of Kent. I first learned about the UK's exceedingly plaintiff-friendly libel laws when…
May 8, 2009
I know, I know it seems like the proverbial shooting fish in a barrel, but some creature that I can't identify is having a fight somewhere in the neighborhood, freaking out my dog, and now I can't go back to sleep; so why not blog? In any case, I found out last week that Jenny McCarthy is on…
May 8, 2009
After having blogged about cancer quackery for more than four years and having spent at least five years before that on the Usenet newsgroup misc.health.alternative seeing virtually all manner of quackery, cancer and otherwise, I thought I had seen it all. Indeed, I thought that there was no form…
May 7, 2009
As you may recall, the last meeting of the Skeptics' Circle never came to pass due to the illness of the host. That was to be the 110th Skeptics' Circle. Given that I had somehow screwed up and used the same number twice, though, it all works out if I simply label this Skeptics' Circle the 110th.…
May 7, 2009
Unfortunately, Orac has been feeling a bit under the weather since last night--so much so that he actually did something he rarely does and stayed home from work. But enough with the third person schtick. If I feel better later, maybe I'll post something. Hopefully I'll be back to 100% tonight and…
May 6, 2009
If there's one thing about the anti-vaccine movement in general and one of its chief mouthpieces for propaganda, the Age of Autism blog, in particular, it's rank hypocrisy. One of the key tenets of anti-vaccine ideology is an unrelenting distrust of big pharma. While that in and of itself would not…
May 6, 2009
A while back, Mark Hoofnagle coined a term that I like very much: Crank magnetism. To boil it down to its essence, crank magnetism is the phenomenon in which a person who is a crank in one area very frequently tends to be attracted to crank ideas in other, often unrelated areas. I had noticed this…
May 5, 2009
Pinch me. I must be dreaming. I say that because I actually see an article in The Huffington Post in which the blogger, Jacob Dickerman, actually correctly describes why homeopathy is quackery! For instance: Homeopaths will tell us that water has a memory. That it vibrates in a certain way and thus…
May 5, 2009
Homeopathy is water. Homeopaths will tell you otherwise. They will tell you that water "memory," which, the way they describe it is some mystical property whereby it "remembers" the remedy with which it's been in contact, even though the substance (whatever it was) has been diluted far beyond the…
May 4, 2009
...comes, from of all places, Gawker: Oh, good, Oprah is going to give Jenny McCarthy a talk show, because she wants your kid to die of the measles. McCarthy, a famous celebrity from the long-defunct Playboy magazine and much missed MTV channel, has been on a crusade to find an evildoer responsible…
May 4, 2009
Ugh. Double ugh. Sitting in my e-mail in box this morning were lots of your e-mails warning me about a bit of news that shows definitively that Oprah Winfrey is beyond redemption, at least when it comes to any sort of medicine or science (not nice, given that I hadn't even had my morning coffee yet…
May 4, 2009
It's times like these when I'm happy that I haven't published in too many Elsevier Journals during the course of my career. I say that because on Thursday, it was revealed that pharmaceutical company Merck, Sharp & Dohme paid Elsevier to produce a fake medical journal that, to any superficial…
May 2, 2009
...at least that seems to be the case with this couple: Tourists enjoying a day of sightseeing at Windsor Castle got more than they bargained for today when a couple were caught having sex on the Queen's lawn. Ignoring signs asking visitors to Please Keep Off The Grass, the man and woman, said to…
May 2, 2009
PalMD, PalMD, PalMD...why did you have to make me aware of this? What Most Doctors Won't Tell You About Preparing for the Swine Flu The blogger, Lisa Sharkey, opines: What can I do to keep my family safe? How can I boost our immune systems now and what complementary medicines can I begin taking…
May 1, 2009
I've been complaining about the antivaccine lunacy at The Huffington Post for a very long time--since a mere two or three weeks after The Huffington Post first came into existence, when it had already become apparent that, in terms of health coverage, HuffPo was nothing more than Arianna's Happy…
May 1, 2009
Ever since I started this little vanity bit known as Your Friday Dose of Woo, lo, these nearly three years ago, when I introduced the waiting blogosphere to the woo-tastic quantum homeopathic stylings of Lionel Milgrom, I've occasionally wondered if I had started out with too much woo. I mean,…
April 30, 2009
I apologize to my readers. I apologize for continually blogging about the pseudoscience at The Huffington Post. Of late, it seems that I can't go more than a day or two without some new atrocity against science being tossed out from Arianna's happy home for antivaccinationists and quacks. Be it…
April 29, 2009
Ten days ago, I made a bit of fun of the big, fat slobbery 120th birthday kiss that David Irving planted on Adolf Hitler's cheek (metaphorically speaking). At the time, I mentioned that there is one Hitler-related holiday that I can actually celebrate, and that day is here: Führerstodestag.…
April 29, 2009
Sometimes I wonder just how people can be so messed up. I know, I know. I spend considerable time writing about fools and charlatans, but this is a different kind of messed up, in which hatefulness is added to the ignorance. Consider this story, sent to me by a reader: "I'm 4 years old," he said, "…
April 29, 2009
Well, the weird news just keeps coming in from my hometown. This time around, consider the case of Tinker Bell. Tinker Bell is a tiny Chihuahua weighing all of five pounds. This poor little creature met nature in a most unfortunate way on Saturday, when some rather heavy storms swept through…
April 28, 2009
No one brings home the stupid the way Michelle Bachmann does: I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out then under another Democrat president Jimmy Carter. And I'm not blaming this on President Obama, I just think it's an interesting coincidence. In just the…
April 28, 2009
Because of the confusion over last week's Skeptics' Circle, I've been totally remiss in doing what I normally do, namely plugging the next host and urging all skeptical bloggers to start getting ready their best skeptical stuff for the Circle, which is next scheduled for May 7. So next week the…
April 28, 2009
I know I've been ragging on The Huffington Post a lot lately. Trust me, I take no great pleasure in doing so. Indeed, more than anything else, it's been a major frustration for me. It's bad enough that HuffPo has been a hotbed of anti-vaccine propaganda and pseudoscience ever since its very…
April 27, 2009
After having been bummed out at the invasion of faith healing and quackery in my hometown newspaper I came to something that bummed me out even more. Most readers here have probably never heard of the Michigan Central Station train depot. Suffice it to say that it is a huge train station that was,…
April 27, 2009
I've complained quite a bit about the news media in my hometown. Indeed, about a year ago, I was stunned at how utterly credulous one TV reporter was about--of all things--orbs. I mean, orbs! Even dedicated ghosthunters don't push orbs much anymore, realizing that they are nothing more than…
April 26, 2009
The short answer is: "Heck if I know." I heard from the host on the 19th, and he said it might be a day or two late. However, we're now out beyond three days, and still no Skeptics' Circle. True, there's a minimalist post with some of the links, but no Circle. I have an e-mail in, but no response…
April 25, 2009
I just learned yesterday from a link a friend sent me and from Professor Deborah Lipstadt's blog that the team of producers who made The Soloist have optioned the movie rights to Professor Lipstadt's book History on Trial: My Day in Court With a Holocaust Denier, which is the story of the libel…
April 24, 2009
I'm tired of blogging about anti-vaccine nonsense again. Don't get me wrong, I had an enormous amount of fun writing my commentary on Fire Marshal Bill's attempt to explain vaccine/autism pseudoscience. It was a hoot, if I do say so myself, but it depresses me that writing such posts is so…
April 23, 2009
Better late than never, given that DrugMonkey has already been all over this. Unfortunately, there was another serious outbreak of antivaccine idiocy over at HuffPo that I felt I had to deal with before this: Embedded video from CNN Video It was a great day indeed. For far too long, animal…
April 22, 2009
After writing about a new low of pseudoscience published in that repository of all things antivaccine and quackery, The Huffington Post (do you even have to ask?), on Tuesday, I had hoped--really hoped--that I could ignore HuffPo for a while. After all, there's only so much stupid that even Orac…