Skepticism/Critical Thinking
sa smith | January 24, 2012We in the skeptic community like to make fun of naturopaths and homeopaths and all the snake oil salesmen out there. While its a good ol laugh here in the West, if not nostalgic, the damage these charlatans can do in other parts of the world is not funny at all.
Long-time readers of SciBlogs might remember someone named Matthias Rath
In the battle of science versus woo...
The Dr. Will Sue You Now - A stolen chapter from Ben Goldacre's book Bad Science
Homeboy got rich taking advantage of desperate HIV/AIDS patients in Africa. Gave them some 'magic potion' of Vitamin C to cure HIV/AIDS HE…
oracknows | January 9, 2012I've spent a lot of time over the years looking at cranks, examining crank science (i.e., pseudoscience), and trying to figure out how to inoculate people against crankery. Because I'm a physician, I tend to do it mostly in the realm of medicine by critically examining "alternative" medical claims and discussing the scientific basis of medicine, both with respect to those "alternative" claims and to more conventional medical claims. However, I don't limit my skepticism and critical thinking just to medicine, although lately I think that I've been "specializing" too much, almost totally…
oracknows | January 9, 2012Will it never end?
First we had "America's Doctor," Dr. Mehmet Oz, credulously featuring psychic medium scammer John Edward on his show last year. Sadly, but typically, Dr. Oz was completely taken in by Edward's cold readings, even the most transparent ones. Even if his previous shows featuring Joe Mercola and a faith healer weren't enough to convince you that Dr. Oz either has no critical thinking skills or does have them but doesn't care about anything but entertainment, bread and circuses, this one should have been.
My readers have now told me today that it looks as though in 2012 Dr.…
sa smith | January 6, 2012I think the unofficial Favorite Journal of ScienceBlogs has got to be the journal, Medical Hypotheses. It used to be, you could take two different approaches if you wanted to publish in Medical Hypotheses. 1-- Smash your face into your keyboard for 15 minutes. Submit for publication. Or, the less expedient 2-- Leave your laptop open on your bed and let your cat walk/take naps/play on the keyboard for a couple of days. Submit.
See, Medical Hypotheses had no peer review step in its publication process, so the kookiest, most dumbdiddilous crap could get published there, from anti-vax idiocy…
oracknows | January 6, 2012It's no secret that I've been highly critical of The Huffington Post, at least of its approach to science and medicine. In fact, it was a mere three weeks after Arianna Huffington launched her blog back in 2005 that I noticed something very distressing about it, namely that it had recruited someone who would later become and "old friend" (and punching bag) of the blog, Dr. Jay Gordon, as well as the mercury militia stalwart David Kirby, among others. As a result, antivaccination lunacy was running rampant on HuffPo, even in its infancy. Many, many, many more examples followed very quickly.…
oracknows | November 23, 2011One of the more depressing things I've seen coming from various practitioners of quackery is a tendency for them to mimic Médecins Sans Frontières (in English, Doctors Without Borders). You know Doctors Without Borders, don't you? It's a fantastic organization that brings volunteer physicians, nurses, and other health care professionals into disaster areas and war zones in order to bring health care to people who desperately need it regardless of politics or ideology. Unfortunately, because MSF is such an admirable group, quacks with good intentions but no effective remedies have mimicked…
oracknows | November 14, 2011As a skeptic and a blogger, my main interest has evolved to be the discussion of science-based medicine and how one can identify what in medicine is and is not based in science. Part of the reason for this is because of my general interest in skepticism dating back to my discovery that there actually are people who deny that the Holocaust ever happened, which led to a more general interest in pseudoscience, pseudohistory, and other non-evidence-based and non-science-based viewpoints that now includes quackery, anti-vaccine nonsense, 9/11 "Truth," creationism, and anthropogenic global warming…
oracknows | November 13, 2011I suck at golf.
There was a time in my life when I golfed a lot. Unfortunately, I was pretty lousy at it. I tended to shoot around 120, and only once in my life do I ever recall breaking 100 for 18 holes. For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, don't sweat it. Just realize that that's not very good. (A lower score is better, and par is usually somewhere around 72, depending on the golf course.) Of course, golf is hard. It's very, very hard, and because golf is so hard golfers are always on the lookout for something that will improve their score. It doesn't matter if we're…
sa smith | November 11, 2011BlogBrother Ethan Siegel just caught (yet another) scientist manipulating data to generate the conclusion they want... not the conclusion the data actually supports.
Exposing a Climate Science Fraud
Yeah, thats how we roll on SciBlogs.
But in my example, the scientists actively hid relevant data from other scientists they were speaking to/the journals they were submitting to/the patients they were preaching to.
In Ethans case, all of the data was happily and knowingly laid out for anyone and everyone to mess around with themselves. So either this Judith Curry character is a fantastic idiot,…
oracknows | November 7, 2011Ever since starting my blog nearly seven (!) years ago, I've concentrated mainly on skepticism in medicine, in particular examining various implausible medical claims that proliferate on the Internet and in our media like so much kudzu choking out science and reason. The reasons are two-fold. First, it's what I'm interested in. Second, it was at the time an "underserved" blogging niche that allowed me to align my skeptical interests with a niche that allowed me to establish myself as a blogger. Ultimately, I became interested in the anti-vaccine movement and somehow found myself becoming one…
oracknows | November 3, 2011I must admit, I'm rather happy that October is over, as that means that the local news stations doing all sorts of brain dead fluff stories about the paranormal. On the other hand, if I were still living in Cleveland, I'd miss out on awesome pareidolia like this:
Here's what they're talking about:
And here's more of a close-up:
I have to admit, I can see the resemblance. I can also see that it's almost certainly nothing more than a reflection off of the camera lens. Also remember that this picture was taken with what looks like a cheap cell phone camera. It is, however, fantastic…
oracknows | August 31, 2011It's one of those things that can't be repeated too many times, but homeopathy is ridiculous. In fact, so ridiculous is homeopathy that I don't usually write about it all that often. The reason is that, like homeopathic dilutions, a bit of skeptical blogging about homeopathy goes a long, long way (although I'm not sure whether diluting the blogging makes it stronger). True, anti-vaccine ideas are often just as ridiculous, but they're also dangerous to children, which is why I'll sometimes write about nothing but anti-vaccine nonsense for several days in a row. Homeopathy, on the other hand,…
oracknows | August 23, 2011About a week ago, there appeared a story in the New York Times about recent discoveries in cancer research written by George Johnson and entitled Cancer's Secrets Come Into Sharper Focus. Overall, it was a better-than-average article for the lay press about recent discoveries in cancer research that go beyond just the cancer cell and just oncogenes. I must admit, however, that certain aspects of it irritated me, not the least of which is that it appeared to buy into one of the most cliched of tropes about medicine and science in spinning the story along the lines of "everything you know about…
oracknows | August 12, 2011A week ago, I took someone who has normally been a hero of mine, Brian Deer, to task for what I considered to be a seriously cheap shot at scientists based on no hard data, at least no hard data that he bothered to present. To make a long, Orac-ian magnum opus short, Deer advocated increased governmental regulation of science in the U.K. based apparently on anecdotes like that of Andrew Wakefield. Worse, rather than presenting even the limited data that exist regarding the prevalence of scientific fraud, he chose instead to devote too much of his limited word count to characterizing…
sa smith | August 4, 2011This is, quite possibly, the biggest science journalism fail in the history of ever.
IN THE HISTORY OF EVER.
*heavy sigh*
OKAY, when we discover new drugs and antivirals and such, we usually dont build these pharmaceuticals from scratch. We steal them from evolution, and try to make them *better* for *our* purposes in the lab-- modify them, concentrate them, purify them, until we have a new drug.
You dont go suck on a tree if you have a headache-- you pop a couple aspirin.
You dont get a prescription for moldy bread when you have a sinus infection-- you pop a couple antibiotics.
We are…
oracknows | July 28, 2011Once upon a time, there was quackery. It was the term used to refer to medical practices that were not supported by evidence and were ineffective and potentially harmful. Physicians understood that modalities such as homeopathy, reflexology, and various "energy healing" (i.e., faith healing) methodologies were based either on prescientific vitalism, magical thinking, and/or on science that was at best incorrect or grossly distorted. More importantly, they weren't afraid to say so.
Quacks did not think this good.
Then, sometime a few decades ago, supporters of quackery decided that they would…
oracknows | July 27, 2011The infiltration of quackademic medicine continues apace.
I know, I know. I say that a lot, but it's only because it is, alas, so very, very true and so very, very distressing to supporters of science-based medicine. It's not as though I haven't written about it many, many times over the last six and a half years; indeed, it's become a major theme of this blog and at least one other blog that regular readers here might be familiar with. Whether it be the American Medical Students Association (AMSA) pitching woo, Georgetown going beyond electives in "complementary and alternative medicine" (…
oracknows | July 20, 2011It appears that while TAM9 was dominating all my extracurricular, non-job-related attention, with my having to get ready to give a talk, I failed to notice another thing besides the placebo/asthma paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine last Thursday. But fear not. If it's important (to me, at least, and hopefully to you too), I'll eventually see it, allowing me to toss off a jaunty, "Better late than never!" and then launch into a topic, even if I'm a week late. So it is this time around, except that the topic is so big that it might require more than one post, perhaps spread…
oracknows | July 14, 2011There won't be a new post today, as you probably have figured out. The reason is that I'm at The Amaz!ing Meeting, where I'll be participating in the Science-Based Medicine Workshop today and a panel discussion on Saturday. Yesterday afternoon after arriving, I was busy putting the finishing touches on my talk, and then in the evening I communed with fellow skeptics over a libation or two. Unfortunately, I could only make it until 11 PM. Damn the time difference between the Eastern time and Pacific time!
I am, however, in a most excellent mood. The reason? Well, I ran into some of my…
oracknows | July 7, 2011I just saw something I don't see every day. Or every week. Or every month. Or even every year.
I frequently complain about supplements on this blog. Well, not supplements per se but rather the double standard we have in this country when it comes to supplements. Basically, supplements are about as close to unregulated as you can imagine, thanks to a law known as the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994, or the DSHEA. Indeed, just last week, I wrote a post about a legislator whom I like to refer to as the lapdog of the supplement industry, namely Republican Senator Orrin Hatch…