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

April 2, 2009
While I'm trying to hammer my grant application into good enough shape to show my collaborator and given that it's been nearly a year since I did this last, now seems as good a time as any to have an open thread. Say your piece. Oh, and by the way, I see that HIV/AIDS denialists have infested Tara'…
April 2, 2009
Yesterday was long and rough, with the day spent desperately trying to finish a grant application and the evening spent in obedience training with our new dog Bailey, who, let's face it, needs more than a bit of doggie discipline. By the time I got home, had dinner, and was checking e-mail, it was…
April 1, 2009
...but sadly, it's not. Jenny McCarthy has struck again. Yesterday, given the release of Jenny McCarthy's new book espousing antivaccinationism and autism quackery and the attendant media blitz the antivaccine movement has organized to promote it, I predicted that a wave of stupid is about to…
April 1, 2009
Enough. I don't know about you, but as a surgeon and a biomedical researcher, I'm fed up with animal rights terrorists who threaten biomedical research with their misinformation about animal research, their terroristic attacks on scientists who engage in such research, and listening to the…
March 31, 2009
Get ready for some serious stupid, folks, stupid that threatens to engulf all reason, as a black hole engulfs all nearby matter that falls into its gravitational field. Although I knew that Jenny McCarthy was soon to release another book promoting autism quackery, I had thought it wasn't coming…
March 31, 2009
I may have been deluding myself when I talked about 2009 shaping up to be a bad year for antivaccinationists. It turns out that the antivaccine movement is succeeding. That's right, a cadre of upper middle class, scientifically illiterate parents, either full of the arrogance of ignorance or…
March 30, 2009
Anyone who's read this blog for more than a month knows my dismal opinion of Indigo woo girl, ex-Playboy Playmate, and gross-out comedienne Jenny McCarthy, who since having a child diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder has transformed herself from D-list celebrity to A-list, where the "A"…
March 30, 2009
Indiana Jones had a saying: "Snakes. Why'd it have to be snakes?" This line was most famously delivered in Raiders of the Lost Ark after he and his friend Sallah had opened the Well of Souls and were staring down into it. Sallah noticed that the ground appeared to be moving within; so Indy shined a…
March 29, 2009
Last week, there was a bit of a scandal of sorts over an editorial published by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), which I blogged about in a rather long post. The short version is that a flawed study that tested using Lexapro that neglected to report a rather important…
March 28, 2009
It's Saturday and therefore time for some lazy non-science blogging, especially since after I finish this post I'm going to bury myself in grant writing. Multiple grant deadlines are approaching, and, given that most of my grant support expires towards the middle of next year, I have to go full…
March 27, 2009
Since its very inception, the Huffington Post has been a hotbed of antivaccine lunacy. Shortly after that, antivaccine woo-meisters like David Kirby, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Kimg Stagliano, and, apparently, one of the editors (Special Projects Editor Rachel Sklar) were joined by all-purpose woo-…
March 26, 2009
Well, there's something new. After nearly four years, I don't recall having seen a Skeptics' Circle meeting quite like this one before. The 108th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle has landed at Podblack Cat, and it's a doozy. In fact, it's a video podcast. Be sure to go and check it out. Next up is…
March 26, 2009
Because of my stands against dubious medical "therapies" and outright quackery and for science- and evidence-based medicine, I have been the frequent target of what I've come to call the "pharma shill gambit." It's a pretty stupid and common ad hominem attack in which the attacker, virtually always…
March 26, 2009
(NOTE ADDED 12/7/2010: Kim Tinkham has died of what was almost certainly metastatic breast cancer.) Three days ago, I decided to take a look at the scientific literature regarding whether any "alternative" therapies do any good for breast cancer. Not surprisingly, I found no evidence that any such…
March 25, 2009
I've at times been asked where I come up with my blogging material. Since I've become fairly popular, one major source has been readers sending me stories. I often don't have time to respond, and most of them don't interest me enough to be motivated to write, but there are enough that do that I…
March 24, 2009
Ha! PZ isn't the only person who gets wingnut comments. I get 'em too, and yesterday I got a doozy from a guy named Keith Dunlop in response to my post about a homepath bringing his quackery to poor AIDS patients in Africa: THE MAIN POST ABOVE IS FROM A DRUG COMPANY MASQUERADING AS CONCERNED…
March 24, 2009
About a month and a half ago, I happened to be fortunate enough to be able to swing the time to attend a symposium in which Brian Deer (whom anyone reading this blog lately is well familiar with) spoke. It was an opportune time, coming as it did around the time when he had just published his new…
March 23, 2009
I usually do this over the weekend before, but better late than never, right? In any case, the 108th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle is fast approaching. In fact, it's a mere two and a half days away! This time around, it will land in the very capable hands of Podblack Cat on Thursday, March 26. As…
March 23, 2009
Has it really been that long? More than two years ago, I wrote a post entitled Death by Alternative Medicine: Who's to Blame? The topic of the post was a case report that I had heard while visiting the tumor board of an affiliate of my former cancer center describing a young woman who had rejected…
March 22, 2009
A few weeks ago, having fallen asleep on the couch watching TV, I awoke to an ad for a most wondrous product. Well, not exactly. In fact the product, known as a Snuggie, left my scratching my head. Three questions came to mind: Who on earth is too stupid to use a blanket? Who on earth would buy a…
March 21, 2009
Normally, I'm not much into LOLCats, but this one is so spot-on for this blog: All too true, alas.
March 21, 2009
This is about as geeky as it gets, but since a couple of the genes I study are homeobox genes, one of which is a HOX gene, one of which is not, I found this hilarious: There you go: All you need to know about homeobox genes if you're not an expert in them. Hat tip to Bioephemera.
March 20, 2009
Oh, goody! Vox Day wants to play. You remember Vox "Hey, it worked for Hitler" Day," don't you? It's been a long time. In fact, I had to do a search to find the last time I had a run-in with him, and it appears that it's been about a year since I last noted him mindlessly parroting…
March 19, 2009
I've been on a bit of a tear criticizing the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM). One of the reasons is because, as I've said time and time again, there is no logical organizational or scientific reason why the potpourri of disparate, often unrelated, and often mutually…
March 19, 2009
Given that I'm the proverbial lapsed Catholic cum agnostic, religion just doesn't play that large a role in my life and hasn't since around six years ago. I don't know if I'll ever discuss or explain on this blog what the last straw resulting in that transformation was (it's too personal), but a…
March 18, 2009
Two days ago, I deconstructed Andrew Wakefield's clumsy attack on Brian Deer, the investigative journalist whose investigations uncovered Wakefield's massive conflicts of interest and, most recently, his scientific fraud. Now, right here in the very comments of this blog, Brian Deer has responded:…
March 18, 2009
It's probably an understatement to say that I've been critical of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM). Indeed, I consider it not only to be a boondoggle that wastes the taxpayers' money funding pseudoscience, but a key promoter of quackery. Worse, its promotion of…
March 17, 2009
Yet another reason why I love The Onion: Because giant, highly intelligent, acid-spitting crabs pose no danger to society. Of course, certain antivaccine advocates seem to think that this parody has something to do with vaccines, which just goes to show how far down the rabbit hole they've gone…
March 17, 2009
Until recently, most of my research was laboratory-based. It included cell culture, biochemical assays, molecular biology, and experiments using mouse tumor models. However, one of the reasons that I got both an MD and a PhD was so that I could ultimately test ideas for new treatments on patients…
March 16, 2009
By way of badscience.net: Speak it, brother Ben! Oh, and don't be too hard on your hairstyle and clothing in that one. I could totally picture you as an incarnation of The Doctor in that getup. That sweater vest does look a bit Peter Davison-ish, although the curly locks do rather echo Tom Baker.