Entertainment/culture
oracknows | March 5, 2009Damn, 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 '70s.
Marc Oakland, 42, who made the discovery, said: "I'd just shifted a tree branch with my foot when I noticed something dark and round slowly coming up to the surface. I got the shock of my life when a Dalek head bobbed up in front of me.
"It was covered in mould and weed, and had quite a bit of…
oracknows | March 4, 2009If 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 antivaccine zealots, having a little fun with some of the more outrageously bizarre forms of pseudoscience, railing against cancer quackery, lamenting how easily pseudoscientific quackery has infiltrated medical academia, complaining about drug companies rigging clinical studies, or trying to educate my…
oracknows | February 28, 2009Why? 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:
oracknows | February 22, 2009From Canada, via Phil Plait, because in my current state I need a good laugh right about now. I'm also working on a rather large post for tomorrow about Andrew Wakefield and the Autism Omnibus, after which I hope to move on to other topics for a while. Nothing like getting back into the swing of things!
oracknows | February 17, 2009Unfortunately, as we have been dreading for the last four months or so since her relapse was diagnosed, my mother-in-law passed away from breast cancer in hospice. She died peacefully, with my wife and the rest of her family at her side. As you might expect, I do not much feel like blogging, and even if I did my wife needs me more. Because I foresaw this coming, however, I do have a series of "Best of" reposts lined up. If you've been reading less than a year or two, they're new to you. If not, I hope you enjoy them again. I don't know when I'll be back, other than maybe a brief update or two…
oracknows | February 14, 2009Unfortunately, as we have been dreading for the last four months or so since her relapse was diagnosed, my mother-in-law passed away from breast cancer in hospice. She died peacefully, with my wife and the rest of her family at her side. As you might expect, I do not much feel like blogging. Because I foresaw this day coming, however, I did set up a series of reposts to autopost for you while I am in mourning. Some, I have even updated and spiffed up. If you've been reading less than a year or two, they're new to you. If not, I hope you enjoy them again. I don't know when I'll be back, other…
oracknows | February 12, 2009Last night, I lambasted Countdown host Keith Olbermann for having been played by the antivaccine movement and having unjustly slimed British journalist Brian Deer. Clearly, Olbermann was so blinded by his hatred of Rupert Murdoch that all chief apologist for the antivaccine movement, former freelance journalist David Kirby, had to do was mention that The Times of London, the newspaper that published Brian Deer's excellent investigative report nailing anti-MMR guru Andrew Wakefield to the wall for falsifying data, is owned by Rupert Murdoch, and it was like waving the proverbial red cape in…
oracknows | February 11, 2009Stick a fork in Keith Olbermann. He's done.
He has now officially degenerated into a liberal version of Rush Limbaugh, except that Rush Limbaugh is occasionally funny. Maybe he's more like Sean Hannity, particularly in his apparent dedication to the truth, or, rather, lack thereof. Hannity detests liberals and will immediately attack on the slightest pretense, even if the information given to him of "liberal wrongdoing" is dubious or outright wrong. Like Hannity, Olbermann will never turn down an opportunity to attack Bill O'Reilly or his paymaster Rupert Murdoch. Somtimes it's justified, but…
oracknows | February 10, 2009I'm not as big a fan of Keith Olbermann as I used to be. Indeed, sometimes he strikes me as the liberal version of Rush Limbaugh, not to mention a blowhard. However, occasionally, he still has it, and when he's on, no one skewers the dishonest better than he does. For instance, after a media flack and the usual inclusion of Bill O'Reilly as runners up, meet Andrew Wakefield, the Worst Person in the World for February 10, 2009:
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Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
That about sums it up right now.
I wonder how long before the antivaccinationist loons…
oracknows | February 10, 2009Poor Jeni Barnett.
You remember Jeni Barnett, don't you? She's the U.K. radio host whose ill-informed rants against vaccines Ben Goldacre exposed so gloriously last week. Unfortunately, the price Ben paid consisted of threats of legal action for "copyright infringement" in the form of his having posted audio of the relevant segment of Barnett's show. Yes, LBC, the radio station on which Barnett's show runs, threatened to sue, forcing Ben to take down the audio. However, as almost always happens when a blogger is threatened in such a manner, the specter of legal action led to the audio files…
oracknows | February 9, 2009Not again.
I have no way of knowing if the media in my hometown happen to be more credulous when it comes to pseudoscience than average, but, given the number of stories referred to me emanating from Detroit and its surrounding suburbs, you'll forgive me if I'm very depressed right now. For instance, we have "investigative reporter" Steve Wilson of WXYZ Channel 7 Action News, who, although claiming the title of "Chief Investigator" for that station, clearly couldn't investigate his way out of a paper bag--at least when it comes to medical stories--given that he is known for routinely…
oracknows | February 7, 2009Pity Andrew Wakefield.
Actually, on second thought, Wakefield deserves no pity. After all, he is the man who almost single-handedly launched the scare over the MMR vaccine in Britain when he published his infamous Lancet paper in 1998 in which he claimed to have linked the MMR vaccine to regressive autism and inflammation of the colon, a study that was followed up four years later with a paper that claimed to have found the strain of attenuated measles virus in the MMR in the colons of autistic children by polymerase chain reaction (PCR). It would be one thing if these studies were sound…
oracknows | February 7, 2009Sometimes, woo makes the news.
Does anyone remember "Professor" Bill Nelson, the cross-dressing "inventor" who created a most amazing woo machine? I've written about it three times before:
Your Friday Dose of Woo: Miraculous quest for the quantum
Your Friday Dose of Woo: Serious woo from Down Under
The SCIO, Quantum Xrroid Consciousness Interface, and Bill Nelson: Better late than never--or maybe not
This guy sells his device for $20,000 a pop and claims he sells 40 machines a month.
Now, check out this Marketplace episode, Miracle Makers or Money Takers? Watch the whole thing.
It never…
oracknows | February 6, 2009If I lived in the U.K., I don't know if I could blog. After all, the U.K. has some of the most plaintiff-friendly libel laws in the world, far more so than here in the U.S., in that in a libel case it is up to the defendant to prove that what he wrote is true, not the plaintiff to prove it false and defamatory. Just go back to 2000 and the most depressing exhibition of that very principle, namely disgraced pseudohistorian David Irving's libel suit against Professor Deborah Lipstadt for having referred to him as a Holocaust denier (which he undoubtedly is) in her book Denying the Holocaust:…
oracknows | February 2, 2009I love Tim Minchin.
I also totally understand where he's coming from when it comes to confronting woo, though, as I've described here. In any case, see Tim in action (parts may be NSFW due to profanity):
Enjoy, as I'm running a bit late in producing my usual content for Monday. Fear not, it's coming later today!
oracknows | January 25, 2009
Back in December, I pointed out a Norwegian movie that the Hitler Zombie definitely approves of: Dead Snow (or Død Snø in Norwegian). After all, how can you go wrong with Nazi zombies in a remote, snow bound area in Norway attacking the usual bunch of hapless but beautiful young people? I don't know about you, but that's all I ask for in a movie, even if I have to read subtitles or put up with dubbing.
Good news, fans of Nazi zombies! After a successful run at Sundance, Død Snø has a U.S. distribution deal:
U.S. rights to Tommy Wirkola's "Dead Snow" have been acquired by IFC Films.…
oracknows | January 23, 2009When it comes to science, I've always detested The Huffington Post.
Nearly four years ago, when Arianna Huffington's vanity group political blog went live, I was the first one to notice a most disturbing trend about it. As far as I knew at the time (or know now), I was the only one to have noticed that The Huffington Post had become a hotbed of antivaccine propaganda a mere three weeks after its launch. It was home to David Kirby, author of that paean to the mercury militia Evidence of Harm: Mercury in Vaccines and the Autism Epidemic, A Medical Controversy and now antivaccine blogger on both…
oracknows | January 16, 2009I hate to see this. I really do.
I really hate it to see people who think they're doing a good thing, who think they're raising money for a worthy charity, totally clueless that what they are doing is supporting the rankest pseudoscience and quackery. Here's an example from my hometown of Detroit. It's a story about a woman who's going to raise money for what she thinks is autism awareness and research at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit this coming week:
When it comes to dressing for the North American International Auto Show Charity Preview, attendee Val McFarland is…
oracknows | January 16, 2009I hate to finish up the week on a bit of a downer, but unfortunately this week I really wasn't in the mood to do justice to Your Friday Dose of Woo, even though I have at least a couple of potential targets--I mean subjects--to cover for my (hopefully) fun little Friday exercise. I was gearing up to try anyway, when I saw something in my e-mail that saddened me greatly. (More on that in a moment.) I even thought of trying to pull off a post on a peer-reviewed article, even though it was pretty late when I got home. However, due to the careful reading and examination of data required, those…
oracknows | January 13, 2009Last week, I did multiple posts about the death of HIV/AIDS denialist Christine Maggiore of what for all the world looked like an HIV-related pneumonia, the excuses HIV/AIDS denialists made to try to persuade people that it wasn't AIDS, and the attempted coverup of damning posts. In the past, I've also taken a certain comedian by the name of Bill Maher to task for his antivaccine views, germ theory denialism, and embrace of detoxification quackery and conspiracy mongering about big pharma.
I should have known that wasn't all. I should have realized that he would be sympathetic to HIV/AIDS…