critical thinking
oracknows | May 22, 2017As much as I like to deconstruct pseudoscientific claims, particularly about health, medicine, and health care, Sometimes it gets a bit draining. There's just so much pseudoscience, so much credulity, so much sheer idiocy out there that trying to refute them and encourage a more skeptical mindset often feels like pissing into the ocean, for all the effect it has. In the age of fake news and Donald Trump, it even feels as though we're going backward—and not slowly, either. That's why I felt it was time for a bit of a break, a bit more optimism than I've been able to muster before. So it was a…
oracknows | March 20, 2017[Orac note: A combination of power outages, travel to Seattle, and trying to write something for my not-so-super-secret other blog conspired to leave me with nothing for this morning. So I thought I'd resurrect this old gem, which hasn't been reposted in at least four years. I actually did try to remove the dead links (this post dates back nearly 12 years in some form or another), but I probably missed a couple. I also changed the post a little, just to remove clearly outdated stuff. In the mean time, be assured that, with no more travel planned and our power restored, things should get back…
oracknows | May 11, 2016One of the central messages that apologists for the use of alternative medicine and, particularly the integration of the unscientific and mystical treatment modalities of alternative medicine with real medicine—a phenomenon known as “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM) or, more recently, “integrative medicine”—is that it’s popular. Oh. So. Popular. If you believe the promoters of these modalities, CAM modalities are used by almost everyone and loved by nearly as many people. I exaggerate, but only a little. It’s basically an appeal to popularity, one of the ultimate logical…
oracknows | December 28, 2015I've frequently noted that one of the things most detested by quacks and promoters of pseudoscience is peer review. Creationists hate peer review. HIV/AIDS denialists hate it. Anti-vaccine cranks like those at Age of Autism hate it. Indeed, as blog bud Mark Hoofnagle Mark Hoofnagle, pointed out several years ago, pseudoscientists and cranks of all stripes hate it. There's a reason for that, of course, namely that it's hard to pass peer review if you're peddling pseudoscience, although, unfortunately, with the rise of "integrative medicine," it's nowhere near as difficult as it once was.
Be…
oracknows | December 1, 2015Of all the slick woo peddlers out there, one of the most famous (and most annoying) is Deepak Chopra. Indeed, he first attracted a bit of not-so-Respectful Insolence a mere 10 months after this blog started, when Chopra produced the first of many rants against nasty "skeptics" like me that I've deconstructed over the years. Eventually, the nonsensical nature of his pseudo-profound blatherings inspired me to coin a term to describe it: Choprawoo. Unfortunately, far too many people find Deepak Chopra's combination of mystical sounding pseudo-profundity, his invocation of "cosmic consciousness"…
oracknows | November 23, 2015As a surgeon and skeptic, I find neurosurgeon turned presidential candidate Ben Carson to be particularly troubling. I realize that I've said this before, but it's hard for me not to revisit his strange case given that the New York Times just ran a rather revealing profile of him over the weekend, part of which included Dr. Carson answering criticism for the really dumb things he's said about vaccines, evolution, and the like. People like Ben Carson are useful examples of how highly intelligent people who are incredibly competent in one area can also demonstrate unbelievable ignorance in…
oracknows | November 6, 2015As a surgeon, I find Ben Carson particularly troubling. By pretty most reports, he was a skilled neurosurgeon who practiced for three decades, rising to the chief of neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins. Yet, when he ventures out of the field of neurosurgery—even out of his own medical specialty—he routinely lays down some of the dumbest howlers I've ever heard. For example, he denies evolution, but, even worse, he's been a shill for a dubious supplement company, Mannatech. Worse still, when called out for his relationship with Mannatech in the last Republican debate, Carson lied through his teeth…
aardvarchaeology | March 21, 2013Registration has opened for the 15th European Skeptics Conference. Hie thee there and register NOW, because there's only 400 tickets!
Here's the confirmed (still evolving) line-up:
Anna Bäsén (Sweden): Undercover Health Journalism
Chris French (UK): Psychological Perspectives on Paranormal Belief and Experience
Maria Berglund (Sweden): Våra opålitliga hjärnor: hur fel vi uppfattar världen och hur fel vi tänker om det vi uppfattar
Dénis Caroti (France): CorteX and Chomsky's Wish
Kendrick Frazier (US) of the Committe for Skeptical Inquiry: title to be announced.
Christer Fuglesang (Sweden):…
oracknows | September 7, 2012Believe it or not, after nearly eight years blogging and around five years before that cutting my skeptical teeth on that vast and wild (and now mostly deserted and fallow) wilderness that was Usenet, I have occasionally wondered whether what I'm doing is worthwhile. Sometime around 1998, after I first discovered Holocaust denial on Usenet, and a year or so after that, I found the home of all quackery on Usenet, misc.health.alternative. From around 1998 to 2004, Usenet was my home, and that's where I fought what I thought to be the good fight against irrationality, antiscience, and quackery.…
sciencepunk | August 7, 2010This is an adaptation of the talk I gave at Westminster Skeptics in the Pub on Monday 2nd August. You can hear an audio transcript of the talk at the Pod Delusion website.
I was invited to stage the talk again at the Winchester SITP, a recording of which is here.
I'm very much a child of the skeptical community. I started writing about bad science in 2004, in a scissors-and-glue zine titled War On Error (a very droll play on words at the time, and a lot easier than coming up with a twist on Overseas Contingency Operation). Eventually this moved online, morphing into SciencePunk. Over…
sciencepunk | April 17, 2010Journalist Michael Specter makes a erudite and impassioned plea for reason and critical thinking in this video from TED. It's a fantastic speech, and huge tracts could have sprung from my own lips (and probably have done on one occassion or another). He even paraphrases a favourite bon mot of mine: "science is a process not a pronoun". Check it out:
Hat tip: Brian
oracknows | January 28, 2010Faster than a blink of an eye (well, not really, but it sure seems that way sometimes) another fortnight has flown by, meaning that it's time yet again for another meeting of that venerable blog carnival of critical thinking, the Skeptics' Circle. This time around, we have our first ever veterinarian hosting. I could make jokes about the Skeptics' Circle going to the dogs, but I'll exercise some rare self-restraint and refrain from doing so. (Oh, wait...)
In any case, this time around, the 129th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle is being held over at SkeptVet.
Head on over and check it out.…
terrasig | October 28, 2009Meet squalene:
Squalene is a 30-carbon branched structure made from isoprene units in the production of cholesterol and other endogenous compounds such as glucocorticoids and sex steroids.
We all have squalene in our bodies. We NEED squalene. All mammals make squalene. Even fungi make squalene (for a compound called ergosterol that is required in their cell membranes).
So ubiquitous is squalene is that it is extracted commercially from shark liver oil. Squalene is intentionally added to cosmetics sold as "natural."
Squalene is also a component of a vaccine adjuvant that has been used for…
terrasig | September 7, 2009
. . . or as Dr Barrett refers to it more accurately, Insurance Reform.
On Friday, Sarah Avery of the News & Observer reported on her interview with the now-retired Pennsylvania psychiatrist who started the Quackwatch.com website in 1996 following years of investigating fraudulent health practices.
From the Quackwatch Mission Statement:
Quackwatch is now an international network of people who are concerned about health-related frauds, myths, fads, fallacies, and misconduct. Its primary focus is on quackery-related information that is difficult or impossible to get elsewhere. Founded by…
terrasig | May 4, 2009My clinical counterpart, surgical oncologist Dr David Gorski, has an excellent post up today at Science-Based Medicine on the irresponsible and misleading information being provided at The Huffington Post during the current H5N1/2009 influenza ("swine flu") outbreak. "The Huffington Post's War on Medical Science: A Brief History" provides a cautionary tale for us in embracing web-based news sources as our excellent print newspapers are going by the wayside.
Within the post, Dr Gorski shows that he is even more familiar with my writing than myself by citing a post at the old Terra Sig on the…
terrasig | October 31, 2008PalMD has a nice post up at denialism blog reviewing a recent NYT article on a foundation run by DKNY's Donna Karan donating $850,000 USD to Beth Israel Medical Center to study the combination of Eastern and Western healing methods. PalMD has the details but he then gets into an area about which I am rather passionate: the incredibly low scientific-based bar that is allowed by journalists and hospital administrators for individuals to be considered "experts" in complementary and alternative medicine (CAM).
As the good doctor notes of one such expert:
Other than his standard medical…
terrasig | September 22, 2008Here's an update on E. coli-gate in Tularosa, NM:
Okay, so it's more than fluid - it's about a pint of sludge left in front of each house where the garbage truck stopped. But this is ridiculous:
[Tularosa resident Ken] Riedlinger took samples from the sludge puddle to the Diagnostic and Technology Center in Alamogordo and they found a huge amount of E. coli, he said.
"The upper tray reported it's infinite, the numbers were too great to count," Riedlinger said. "This is massive, massive E. coli. This is deadly stuff."
E. coli is a bacterium found in the lower intestine of warm-blooded animals…
terrasig | August 20, 2008Many thanks to science and medical senior writer Cathy Arnst of BusinessWeek for the unexpected coverage online a couple of days ago in their Working Parents blog.
Ms Arnst cited Terra Sig and one of our previous posts in discussing the additional FTC settlement funds to be provided by the makers of Airborne for false claims to consumers:
For background on the charges against the product check out the informative blog terra sigillata, by a pharmacologist, which pulls apart false claims made on behalf of natural remedies (in fact, he pulls apart false medical claims in general--a blog worth…
terrasig | August 13, 2008Most people know of methadone as a long-term substitution therapy for people addicted to heroin, morphine, or other similar drugs called opiates or opioids. A good, free full-text description of methadone maintenance therapy (MMT) can be found in the 15 June 2001 issue of American Family Physician.
Now, in the 1 August 2008 issue of Cancer Research, Claudia Friesen and colleagues at the University of Ulm report that methadone can kill leukemia cells in culture and reverse acquired resistance to other drugs like doxorubicin (Adriamycin). Press reports to this effect appeared at the beginning…
terrasig | June 23, 2008John Lynch let us know last evening about Carlin's passing on Sunday. I think you'll find many people sharing their favorite George Carlin moments today. I found him to be remarkably observant on how language is used to deal with social and political issues ("shell shock" became "battle fatigue" which then became "post-traumatic stress disorder').
The man also clearly had some interests in pharmacology, particularly natural products - from the AP report:
Despite his reputation as unapologetically irreverent, Carlin was a television staple through the decades, serving as host of the "…