Skepticism/Critical Thinking
oracknows | January 21, 2013Time really flies. It's hard to believe that the first national skeptical conference of the season is NECSS 2013 (The Northeast Conference on Science and Skepticism), hosted by the New York City Skeptics and the New England Skeptical Society, is fast approaching. In fact, it's only a little more than two months away. The conference will be held in New York City on April 5-7. Sadly, that conflicts with the American Association for Cancer Research meeting, meaning that I'll be in Washington, DC that weekend and can't go. (As an aside, maybe anyone from the DC area who also can't go to NECSS and…
oracknows | January 9, 2013About a year and a half ago, I applied a heapin' helpin' of not-so-Respectful Insolence to a a clueless article about the the "triumph" of New Age medicine. The article channeled the worst fallacies of apologists for alternative medicine. Basically, its whole idea appeared to be that, even if most of "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) or "integrative medicine" is quackery (which it most certainly is), it doesn't matter because allegedly it's making patients better because its practitioners take the time to talk to them in a way that most doctors do not. In brief, the article was…
oracknows | January 8, 2013Remember Dr. Sin Hang Lee?
If you don't remember Lee, maybe you remember a while back, when the antivaccine group SaneVax touted findings that it claimed were devastating to Gardasil. Specifically, they claimed that there was vaccine-derived human papilloma virus DNA in Gardasi. Ring any bells yet? And it turns out that the guy who made this apparently horrific "discovery" was—you guessed it!—Dr. Sin Hang Lee. Back in 2011, Lee, apparently either funded by or working with SaneVax, "discovered" that there was DNA in his Gardasil. As I explained at the time, there was a lot less to this claim…
oracknows | January 8, 2013If there's one thing about "alternative" medicine, "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM), or "integrative medicine" that's always puzzled me, it's just how gullible some practitioners must think their clients are. In some cases, they might know their customers every bit as well as a car salesman knows his clients or an author knows his readers, but in actuality most people who fall for alt-med are no more gullible than average. However, some words seem to impress more than ever, as promoters of alt-med scramble to appropriate impressive-sounding science terms into their woo. I've…
oracknows | January 2, 2013If there's one claim that practitioners of "holistic" medicine frequently make, it's that "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) or "integrative medicine" or whatever the term du jour for the combining of quackery with science-based medicine is these days is allegedly so much better than "conventional" or "allopathic" medicine (or whatever disparaging term "holistic practitioners" prefer) at preventing disease and keeping people healthy. The claim is a load of fetid nonsense, of course, but it sounds convincing on the surface. After all, CAM practitioners have been disturbingly…
oracknows | January 1, 2013That Dr. Mehmet Oz uses his show to promote quackery of the vilest sort is no longer in any doubt. I was reminded yet again of this last week when I caught a rerun of one of his shows from earlier this season, when he gazed in wonder at the tired old cold reading schtick used by all "psychic mediums" from time immemorial, long before the current crop of celebrity psychic mediums, such as John Edward, Sylvia Browne, and the "Long Island Medium" Theresa Caputo, discovered how much fame and fortune they could accrue by scamming the current generation of the credulous. Speaking of Theresa Caputo…
oracknows | December 28, 2012Regular readers have probably noticed that I'm taking it easy this week, at least compared to my usual ridiculous level of output. It is, after all, the holidays, and last night I even went to see my cousin's son play basketball and then hung out at the local Knights of Columbus hall. (No, it didn't spontaneously explode upon my entering it.) I'll get back to regular blogging after the 1st of the year. Between now and then I'll be uncharacteristically mellow and brief, because even a clear Plexiglass box of blinking lights needs a break now and then to recharge the ol' Tarial cells. Not that…
oracknows | December 10, 2012As I mentioned yesterday, Orac is currently away at an undisclosed location that is someplace warm. He is there, taking a rare pre-solstice break, preparing for the Mayan apocalypse that is to come on the 21st of this month. (Actually, he's recharging his Tarial cell, the better to be prepared for the utter nonsense that is to come in 2013, given that there is, at the very minimum, going to be another Stanislaw Burzynski hagiography released early in the year.) In the meantime, as I mentioned yesterday, most, if not all, of the posts this week will appear...familiar. At least, they might be…
sa smith | December 8, 2012I love Oklahoma-- Great school, great cost of living, genuinely nice folks, and believe it or not, a fantastic atheist/skeptic scene.
You all know about FreeOK (one and my talk isnt up yet from two... SEEEETH!), organized by Atheist Community of Tulsa and the OKC Atheists. Those groups are amazing, outside of the conference. Ive mentioned it numerous before, but whether you are into a quiet night of boardgames or partying it up at karaoke, need support/confidence/advice for dealing with radical theist relatives or want to go see 'The Hobbit' with some folks, want to learn something new at a…
sa smith | November 21, 2012Ask anyone who has stood up to quacks/charlatans/nutbars-- Crazy people be CRAZY.
Someone tries to educate the public, move their field, shine a candle in a demon haunted world, stand up for what they think is right, and they are rewarded with insane emails (check!), often including threats of physical violence (check!), badgering emails to ones employers (check, like, times eleventy!), which inevitably escalate into legal bullying (stifling free-speech by issuing false DMCAs, filing lawsuits with the intent of bankrupting the opposition, exploiting bullshit libel laws in backwards countries…
oracknows | November 13, 2012Regular readers probably know that I'm into more than just science, skepticism, and promoting science-based medicine (SBM). (If they're regular readers of my other, not-so-super-secret other project, they might also realize that they've seen this post before elsewhere. I had to stay out late for a work-related event and decided to tart it up and recycle. So sue me.) I'm also into science fiction (hence the very name of this blog, not to mention the pseudonym I use), computers, and baseball, not to mention politics (at least more than average). That's why our recent election, coming as it did…
oracknows | November 5, 2012It's no secret that I have little but contempt for radical animal rights activists. I make no apologies for this and, quite frankly, consider my contempt for them well-justified based on their behavior and words. Be it their fetishization of violence against researchers who use animals, their threatening of students in order to frighten them away from careers in scientific research that might involve the use of animals (for example, Alena Rodriguez), intimidating researchers by declaring their children as "not off limits," trying to burn investigators' houses down, harassing researchers, and…
oracknows | October 25, 2012Instead of the usual logorrheic (usually) well-thought out Insolence you've come to expect every day, Instead, you'll hvae an announcement and a couple of random thoughts. The reasons are multiple. First, today's a travel day. I'm heading off to Nashville to attend and speak at CSICon. My topic? What do you think it will be? Why, quackademic medicine, of course! (What else would it be?) Not only will I get to share the stage with old friends and blogging collaborators, but with Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Education! Yes, as part of the overall discussion of the problem of…
oracknows | October 23, 2012Given how many bloggers have already weighed in on the story of an Italian court convicting geologists of manslaughter for failing to issue adequate earthquake warnings before an earthquake that devastated the town of L'Aquila, including Steve Novella, Daniela at Skepchicks, Sharon Hill at Skeptic, and even Instapundit, you'd think that even Orac wouldn't have anything to say about it. You would, of course, be wrong. Orac always has something to say about such things. The question is simply whether he decides he's interested enough in the story to take the time and effort to compose and let…
oracknows | October 18, 2012The 2012 election campaign is in full swing, and, for better or worse, health care is one of the major defining issues of the election. How can it not be, given the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), also colloquially known as "Obamacare," was one of the Obama administration's major accomplishments and arguably the largest remaking of the American health care system since Medicare in 1965? It's also been singularly unpopular thus far, contributing to the Republican takeover of the House of Representatives in the 2010 elections, as well as the erosion of…
oracknows | October 14, 2012In a week and a half, Harriet Hall, Kimball Atwood, and I will be joining Eugenie C. Scott at CSICon to do a session entitled Teaching Pseudoscience in Medical (and Other) Schools. As you might imagine, we will be discussing the infiltration of pseudoscience into medical academia and medical training, a phenomenon I frequently refer to as "quackademic medicine." It's a topic that has been much discussed on this blog; so I am quite confident that we are the people to tell our audience just how bad it is, why it's happening, and why you should be concerned about it. Also, from my perpective,…
oracknows | October 8, 2012One of the hazards of standing up for science and science-based medicine (and against cranks) is that some of these cranks will try to contact you at work. That's why I have a policy about blog-related e-mails sent to me work address, and that policy is that I usually ignore them, whereas I might actually respond if it's sent to my blog e-mail address. Well, it's not an absolute policy. If it's a reporter or fellow skeptic who contacts me at work, I might well respond from my blog address, but crank e-mails sent to my work address are 100% guaranteed to be sent straight to the metaphorical…
oracknows | October 5, 2012Remember Alan Yurko?
To remind those of you not familiar with this particularly odious excuse for a human being, I'll briefly relate who he is and why he's so vile. Alan Yurko is a baby killer, pure and simple. He shook his 10-week-old son to death. Normally, such a pitiful excuse for a human being would not be "worthy" of comment, much less admiration, but not to the antivaccine movement. Yurko was sentenced to life in prison without parole for his crime but somehow managed to find himself the "hero" of a campaign
I first learned of this vile concept when I learned of the case of Alan Yurko…
sa smith | October 2, 2012How to do things, from someone who actually does things:
How to Protest a ‘Psychic’-- Dr. Caleb Lack
There is a big difference between writing and talking about doing something, and actually doing something in the Real World. Confuse the two at your own risk.
For instance, while it is fine and dandy to demand on your blog that all skeptic/atheist meetings have child care provided, it is another thing entirely to secure the necessary insurance for child care, find the money to pay for that insurance, find volunteers trained in child care/CPR/basic medicine, train all the volunteers in a…
oracknows | September 26, 2012There's an oft-quoted saying that's become a bit of a cliché among skeptics that goes something like this: There are two kinds of medicine: medicine that's been proven scientifically to work, and medicine that hasn't. This is then often followed up with a rhetorical question and its answer: What do call "alternative medicine" that's been proven to work? Medicine. Of course, being the kind of guy that I am, I have to make it a bit more complicated than that while driving home in essence the same message. In my hands, the way this argument goes is that the whole concept of "alternative"…