Pseudoscience
oracknows | May 3, 2007If there's one undeniable aspect of "intelligent design" creationism advocates, it is their ability to twist and misrepresent science and any discussions of evolution to their own ends. Be it Dr. Michael Egnor's twisting of history to claim that eugenics is based on Darwinism, rather than the artificial selection (or, as we snarky ones like to call it, intelligent design), claims that "Darwinism" is a tautology and irrelevant to the question of antimicrobial resistance, or blaming evolution for atheism, the decline of Western mores, and, if you believe the ID advocates, bad breath, key to the…
oracknows | April 29, 2007Thanks to a reader commenting in yesterday's post, I've been made aware of a truly brilliant summation of creationism of both the young earth and intelligent design variety:
Exactly.
oracknows | April 29, 2007I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing. Certainly it's a bad thing that another physician is diving head-first into the pseudoscience that is "intelligent design" creationism and making a of himself in the process.
On the other hand, at least this time it's not a surgeon:
A Columbia medical professor made his case for scientific acceptance of "intelligent design" last night and found himself taking fire from his peers for his view.
John Marshall, a professor of internal medicine at the University of Missouri-Columbia, argued in front of about 100 people in a University Hospital…
oracknows | April 27, 2007I've said it once before, but this week's woo compels me to say it again: I happen to love gadgets.
I've been a bit of a technogeek since very early on in my life, with a lot of the things that go along with it, including a major interest in science fiction, awkwardness around the opposite sex, When at their best, gadgets can do things that need to be done and, if well designed, can do them with panache, making drudgery almost fun Then of course, there's the almost Dilbert-like joy males into technogeekery have in one-upping each other, almost like the surgeons I described yesterday one-…
oracknows | April 20, 2007I'm confused again about what appear to be mutually conflicting statements.
The Discovery Institute's favorite creationist neurosurgeon Dr. Michael Egnor two months ago on Pharyngula:
Perhaps a fable (not a just-so story!) will illustrate. Imagine that you, P.Z., were a student in 1925. You would study Darwinism fairly intensively as a high school student, undergrad, and med student (it's a hypothetical!). In high school you'd read Hunter's 'A Civic Biology' (unless you lived in Dayton, Tennessee), which taught the Darwinian superiority of the Nordic races and the need to eliminate the lesser…
oracknows | April 20, 2007
Pity poor Nikola Tesla.
A sure sign of the most potent woo is when the woo-meister responsible claims to base it on the work of a great scientists, particularly a great scientist who's been dead well over 60 years.
Like Nikola Tesla.
The deader the scientist is and the longer he or she's been dead, the more sure the woo-meister can be that only the few actual scientists who pay attention to woo and bother to refute will have the necessary background knowledge to refute it. Moreover, the longer ago the scientist lived, the less chance of any pesky relatives caring enough to tell the woo-…
oracknows | March 30, 2007It is with some trepidation that I approach the latest target of Your Friday Dose of Woo.
No, it's not because the woo is so potent that it has actually struck the fear of You-Know-Who in me (I leave it up to readers to determine whether I was referring to God or Valdemort), although it is indeed potent woo. Nor is it that the woo is boring woo (there's a reason why "power of prayer" kind of woo usually doesn't make it into YFDoW unless there's a really entertaining angle to be targeted). No, it's because this particular woo seems to combine genetics with systems biology (I kid you not),…
oracknows | March 21, 2007...like this (explanation here):
Michael Egnor •
Michael Egnor •
Michael Egnor •
Michael Egnor •
Michael Egnor •
Michael Egnor •
Michael Egnor •
Michael Egnor •
Michael Egnor •
Michael Egnor •
Michael Egnor •
Michael Egnor •
Michael Egnor •
Michael Egnor •
Michael Egnor •
Michael Egnor •
Michael Egnor •
Michael Egnor •
Michael Egnor •
Michael Egnor •
Michael Egnor •
Michael Egnor •
Michael Egnor •
Michael Egnor •
Michael Egnor •
Michael Egnor •
Michael Egnor •
Michael Egnor •
Michael Egnor •
Michael Egnor •
Michael Egnor •
Michael Egnor •
Michael Egnor •
Michael Egnor •
Michael Egnor •…
oracknows | March 12, 2007It figures.
After my having written repeated debunkings of various physicians who are creationists (mostly of the "intelligent design" variety), in retrospect I should have seen this one coming. I should have seen that the Discovery Institute, eager to use anyone they can find whom they can represent to the public as having scientific credentials (never mind whether those credentials have anything to do with evolutionary biology) and thus dupe the public into seeing them as having authority when they start laying down ignorant brain farts about how they "doubt Darwinism," would settle on…
oracknows | March 10, 2007Well, not exactly "no comment." You know that Orac, being the annoyingly obnoxious skeptic that he is, has to put at least two cents in.
This one's just plain odd. I knew Rosie O'Donnell's not exactly the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree, and she also borders on being a creduloid, at least with respect to almost buying the myth that mercury in vaccines causes autism (although she does get props for slapping down David Kirby) and waxing antivax about Gardasil, the new vaccine against human papilloma virus. But last week, she revealed that she has been using "inversion therapy" for years to…
oracknows | March 8, 2007...That all around evolution-ignorant but nonetheless eager lapdog of the Discovery Institute, SUNY Stonybrook Professor of Neurosurgery Dr. Michael Egnor, is back.
Rats. I thought that the utter drubbing he took at the hands of myself and my fellow ScienceBloggers (in particular PZ Myers) might have given him the message that he needs to lay low for a while. Apparently not. I guess he must have the monumental ego that more than a few neurosurgeons are famous for. (After all, it takes supreme confidence in one's own abilities to be able to cut into the human brain and believe that the patient…
oracknows | March 1, 2007Here's the finale of my audience participation project for today. I've saved the "best" for last. This short video, called Science Refutes Its Own Laws?, is the target. Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to answer the questions contained therein and/or demonstrate why they represent typical creationist canards, and do it without reference to Talkorigins.org. It's pretty easy, but it's also depressing that this crap persists. Also, don't be too depressed. There's one more of these coming, but it's an antidote.
It's also amusing how confident the tone of the video is. Forgive me…
oracknows | March 1, 2007Here's part 2 of my audience participation exercise. This is a continuation of my audience participation/open thread set of posts for today. It's called "list the creationist fallacies." This post is part 2 of this endeavor. This short video, called Which came first, the DNA or the protein?, is the target. Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to answer the questions contained therein and/or demonstrate why they represent nothing more than the typical creationist canard. It's pretty easy, but it's also depressing that this crap persists. If that's not entertaining enough, feel free…
oracknows | March 1, 2007Busy, busy, busy last night and all day today until late, namely because I'm out of town on business. My schedule has been packed, and I won't be home until late. There's no time to post one of my characteristic pearls of verbosity. So what do I do when this happens?
Be grateful that YouTube exists, that's what. With a little planning ahead and a few minutes' work, I can make sure that the Respectful Insolence you all know and love keeps flowing while I'm away, only this time with some help. This time around, I'm going to do a couple of audience participation/open thread kind of posts. It's…
oracknows | February 23, 2007This week's been a lot of doom and gloom here on the ol' blog, hasn't it? I don't know how it happened, but somehow I let blogging about dichloroacetate, the inexpensive small molecule drug that has been widely touted as a "cure for cancer" that "big pharma" (or the FDA, or both, take your pick) is keeping from cancer patients because it's supposedly unpatentable and unprofitable, take over the blog for three whole days. Believe it or not, I really hadn't meant for that to happen. It just sort of took over. Of course, big time Pharma Shill that I supposedly am (with the badge to prove it), no…
oracknows | February 22, 2007I realize that this blog has become "all dichloroacetate (DCA) all the time." I think I've said what needs to be said in my usual long-winded fashion, and now it's time to move on to less heavy topics for a while. Tomorrow, we will have another installment of Your Friday Dose of Woo. For a warmup, however, here's a tasty little tidbit. Apparently, the Los Angeles Zoo has paid $4,500 to a feng shui expert to help them design the enclosure for golden monkeys from China:
LOS ANGELES Feb 13, 2007 (AP)-- The Los Angeles Zoo paid $4,500 to an expert in the ancient Chinese art of feng shui to ensure…
oracknows | February 19, 2007You know, I'm really tired of this.
I'm tired of my fellow physicians with a penchant for spouting scientifically ignorant "attacks" on or "doubts" about evolution. It embarrasses the hell out of me around ScienceBlogs, and I really wish they would stop it. Sadly, it seems to be an increasingly long list. Although I first noticed it when former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (who is a cardiac surgeon) voiced support for "intelligent design" back in 2005, this tendency among my fellow physicians to pontificate on their distaste for evolution didn't start to irritate me really seriously…
oracknows | February 16, 2007Like most people, I like making money. True, it's not the main goal of my life (otherwise I definitely wouldn't be in academics), but, all in all, it's better to be comfortably off than to be poor. And, as I've said before, although I could make more in private practice, I don't do too badly as an academic surgeon. I can afford a decent house, a nice car, computers, and gadgets, and still save for retirement. Of course, key to that is not spending beyond my means, as some at my income level somehow still manage to do, but wouldn't it be nice if you could access forces and powers that would--…
oracknows | February 2, 2007
You know, I really wish I could have made it to The Amazing Meeting this year. It would have been really cool to have a chance to hear in person such skeptical luminaries, such as The Amazing Randi, Penn and Teller (although I do concede that Penn's Libertarianism does occasionally border on credulity for some dubious propositions), and Phil Plait. And who wouldn't want to meet the purveyors of what's become my favorite skeptical podcast, The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, such as Steve Novella and The Skepchick? And, of course, it's been a long time since I've had the opportunity to…
oracknows | January 18, 2007Geez, I might as well just put a paper bag over my head right now around my fellow ScienceBloggers.
You've heard me lament before about the woeful ignorance about biology and evolution common among all too many doctors. (You haven't? Well check here, here, here, and here.) Heck, you've even heard me lament about it just a few days ago, my irritation being piqued by a physician by the name of Dr. Geoffrey Simmons.
Now, as if to rub my face in it, Dembski's crew over at Uncommon Design have made me aware of an orthopedic surgeon named David A. Cook, M.D., who's adding to my embarrassment. As…