Pseudoscience
oracknows | March 10, 2006As a skeptic, when discussing psychics and how there is zero scientific evidence for the existence of psychic powers, I often come up against the attitude that says, "What's the harm if people believe in psychics?"
What's the harm indeed? Have your palm read, and it's kind of fun, but you generally don't take it all that seriously. The same is true of psychic readings, which, for most people, seem to be more a form of entertainment than anything else, given how little stock most people put in them. The prevailing attitude out there seems to be that, if people are willing to give up their…
oracknows | March 9, 2006Light blogging today, as I'm in the O.R. (Although there will be one more brief post, which, thanks to the wonders of Movable Type's ability to let me schedule a time when posts are published, will be appearing early this afternoon, while I'm still working.The reason why I'm delaying it will, hopefully, be apparent.)
Light blogging or not, I couldn't resist mentioning a post by Kathleen Seidel in which she's picked up on something that I hadn't noticed but wish I had.
In a long, multi-topic "roundup" sort of post, near the end, she mentions RFK Jr.'s essay Tobacco Science and the Thimerosal…
oracknows | March 6, 2006Curse you, Mark and David Geier.
I'm getting tired of having to subject my scientific and critical thinking skills to the assaults on science and reason that you routinely publish in dubious journals to use as weapons in your apparently never-ending crusade to extract as much money as possible out of vaccine manufacturers and the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. Dissecting your pseudoscientific claims causes me pain, not so much that I'm driven to take a hiatus from blogging, as Matt was by Kent Hovind's creationism, but almost.
I had hoped to let this cup pass, given how much I've…
oracknows | March 1, 2006A while back, I wrote about Airborne, the "herbal" concoction designed by a schoolteacher that is touted as preventing colds and the flu if taken preemptively or lessening their severity if taken early on in the course of a cold. I concluded that there was no evidence that it did what Victoria Knight-McDowell, a schoolteacher and the creator of Airborne, claims. Now the company itself seems to be admitting as much. It turns out that the company commissioned a study to "prove" Airborne's efficacy, and its results did seem to show a mild positive effect on colds. Unfortunately, the study was…
oracknows | February 27, 2006
I love blog carnivals.
In fact, I love 'em so much that I hosted four of them took one over when its creator decided to retire from blogging.
But here's one that PZ, RPM, Afarensis, and all of the other ScienceBloggers inclined to defend evolution will want to wander over to see just how inane some creationist arguments can be. Indeed, the Pooflinger has already targeted them for some particularly ripe debunkings:
Yesterday marked the launch of an entirely new carnival over at Radaractive called, amusingly, the "Darwin Is Dead" carnival. Oh yeah: and it began with a whopping five (count…
oracknows | February 23, 2006Treating autism with chemical castration
I thought I'd seen it all.
Ever since I found myself critically examining the claim that autism and autistic spectrum disorders are caused by mercury found in the preservative(thimerosal) used until recently in childhood vaccines, I thought that I'd heard of every dubious or quack autism therapy there is out there. Indeed, it is from that concept (that "autism is a misdiagnosis for mercury poisoning,", which is not supported by epidemiological or preclinical evidence) that flows all sorts of dubious therapies to "remove" the mercury. Foremost among…
oracknows | February 21, 2006His Noodliness walks (or flies) among us, and here's the evidence.
Hey, it's better than any "evidence" that I've seen supporting the existence of UFO's or ghosts.