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

March 16, 2009
The antivaccine counterattack against Brian Deer continues. As you recall, about a month ago British reporter Brian Deer published an exposé, a tour de force of investigative journalism that led him to discover that Andre Wakefield had not only had incredibly blatant undisclosed conflicts of…
March 15, 2009
I have to admit that I've always had a soft spot for pareidolia, that phenomenon wherein people see things that aren't there because human brains are wired for pattern recognition. As a child (and even as an adult), I loved lazily looking up at the clouds and envisioning animals, objects, and…
March 14, 2009
I love it when someone does something like this, namely pwning an antivaccine video like The Truth About Vaccines: It's not perfect, but I love it. Now if only more people would do something similar on YouTube. I'm tired of seeing titles like VACCINES KILL INNOCENT CHILDREN! - Hundreds and More…
March 13, 2009
...well, not really. It's just that I wanted to welcome the newest addition to the ScienceBlogs Collective, Dr. Erik Klemetti, a geologist who spends most of his professional time thinking about magma, and likes to blog about it at Eruptions. Check it out, and enjoy!
March 13, 2009
Khaaaaan! No, wait a minute. I mean: Nooooooo! No place is safe from the invasion of quackademic medicine. No place. As you will soon see. As you know, I've documented the infiltration of pseudoscientific and outright antiscientific woo into institutions that really should know better, namely…
March 12, 2009
Well, here's a new way of hosting a Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle. What we have this time is the combination of a minimalist presentation of the relevant links with a maximalist bit of podcast blather from Theo Clark of The Skeptics' Field Guide. Go check it out! Next up is PodBlack Cat on March…
March 12, 2009
Science as it is practiced today relies on a fair measure of trust. Part of the reason is that the culture of science values openness, hypothesis testing, and vigorous debate. The general assumption is that most scientists are honest and, although we all generally try to present our data in the…
March 11, 2009
I know I've been hard on a lot of legislators, including woo-friendly clods such as Tom Harkin, Ron Paul, and Dan Burton. Occasionally, though, a legislator will show that he "gets it" (or at least hasn't drunk the Kool Aid). Forwarded to me was a letter sent from Representative John Linder (R-GA)…
March 11, 2009
Advocates of so-called "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) frequently make the claim that they are the victims of a "double standard," in which (or so they claim) they are subjected to harsher standards than what they often refer to as "conventional" or "orthodox" medicine, usually…
March 10, 2009
Crank alert! Age of Autism has announced that David Kirby and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. will be on the David Bender Show at 1:15 PM today. It would be nice if, to counter the antivaccine activists, reality-based listeners would call in, although I am very pessimistic that Bender would give them a fair…
March 10, 2009
...the reasons are threefold. Reason #1 is my iPhone. As I mentioned the other day, the microphone mysteriously stopped working while I was in Phoenix. At first I thought it was a network thing, as on less rare than I would like occasions I had had difficulty with AT&T in which I might have…
March 9, 2009
Regular readers of this blog know pretty much what I think of Jenny McCarthy. In brief, she's an opportunistic, scientifically ignorant but media-savvy twit whose hubris leads her to believe that her Google University education, coupled with her personal anecdotal experience, render her…
March 9, 2009
PZ's muscling in on my territory. Apparently, ruling the Darwinian, creationist-destroying atheist cephalopod blogging world isn't enough, and he has to start moving in on medicine. No problem, given that this time around he brought some rather interesting woo to my attention, suggesting it as…
March 8, 2009
So here I sit in the Phoenix airport, which (woo-hoo!) has free wifi, contemplating a most puzzling problem. My iPhone, which was working just fine last night and which still seems on the surface to be working fine is behaving most strangely. My wife tried to call me, but I couldn't pick up because…
March 8, 2009
Sadly, the meeting's over, and I'm winging my way back home as this very post shows up on the blog for your edification. Because it's Sunday and, more importantly, because I'm too tired to produce anything substantive, I leave you with this bit of Asian weirdness sent to me by my sister. It left me…
March 7, 2009
It's a rare thing indeed for this to happen, but words fail me here: Wow. Just wow. Because clearly the Obama administration is getting ready to fire up the ovens for responsible borrowers who paid their mortgages on time. Truly, a black hole of stupid in a single cartoon! The stupid burns on so…
March 7, 2009
I realize I'm a bit late on this, but it's hard not to take the antivaccine movement's icon and apply her own misinformation about vaccines being "toxins" injected into the bloodstream against her. In fact, doing so is far more justified, given that last week she was quoted in an interview as…
March 6, 2009
I have two brief observations to make before I launch into my latest bit of insolence. First off, it figures that, whenever I go away to a meeting, there's simply an embarrassment of blogging riches. People have been sending me stuff to which, even if I were at home and having a slow week, I could…
March 5, 2009
Damn, wouldn't it have been cool to have been the guy who found this? A Dalek, lost from Doctor Who since the 1970s or 1980s: Workers were baffled how the Dr Who relic ended up there, but it may have been in the murky water for more than 30 years after being dumped during location filming in the '…
March 5, 2009
I realize I've said it before, but I still can't believe as many people read what I like to lay down on a daily basis right here on this blog. Believe me, it has nothing to do with an sort of false sense of modesty. After four years at this, I know I'm good at blogging. Real good. But good isn't…
March 4, 2009
As this posts I should be on an airplane winging its way to much warmer climes than where I reside in order to attend the Society of Surgical Oncology 62nd Annual Cancer Symposium. There, in Phoenix, I will eagerly absorb all the latest and greatest knowledge in the realm of cancer surgery, commune…
March 4, 2009
If there's' one theme, one cause, that this blog has emphasized throughout the four years of its existence and the three years of its having resided on ScienceBlogs, it's been to champion science- and evidence-based medicine over pseudoscience and quackery. Whether it's refuting the lies of…
March 3, 2009
Yesterday, I wrote about Senator Tom Harkin's (D-IA) little woo-fest in the Senate's Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, which he called Integrative Care: A Pathway to a Healthier Nation. I and a lot of the rest of the medical blogosphere (such as PalMD, Val Jones, and Tufted…
March 2, 2009
The Tufted Titmouse explains in a spot-on parody of Senator Harkin's statement to his Senate panel. I'm tellin' ya, "integrative" reporting is the wave of the future, just like "integrative" medicine.
March 2, 2009
Over the weekend, some readers sent me a link to a story that, presumably, they thought would be of interest to me, given that I graduated from the University Michigan Medical School back in the late 1980s. Specifically, it's a report that U. of M. has halted the use of dogs in its surgical…
March 1, 2009
Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) owes me a new irony meter. I'll explain in a minute, but first you have to know why I even give a rodent's posterior about Harkin. As you may recall, no single legislator in the U.S. has done more to damage the cause of science- and evidence-based medicine than Tom…
March 1, 2009
I can't argue with that: I'd mention that the same thing applies to nerd boys. I know, given that I used to be one and now, thirty years on, remain arguably a nerd man. (Via Stupid Evil Bastard) (Yeah, I know I basically took the weekend off, posting only a couple of videos. Don't worry, the…
February 28, 2009
Why? Because I feel like it. For example, there are times I've felt like this: Except that maybe I should sing a version called "I'm Afraid of Antivaccinationists." Nahhh. Instead let's go back. Way back:
February 27, 2009
It's a little late, but better late than never! Skeptics Circle #106 finally landed last night over at Disillusioned Words. Jeff Stingerstein lays it all out in a "just the facts, m'am" manner that demonstrates that, for all the fantastically creative and wild formats that prior hosts have used to…
February 27, 2009
Let's try this again. Two days ago, I tried to get away from blogging about antivaccinationists. I even succeeded for one day. Unfortunately, that was all, because J.B. Handley and his crew of antivaccine loons cooked up a really big, really deceptive, and really desperate gambit that just couldn't…