Skepticism/Critical Thinking
sa smith | July 7, 2010I had a really cool post scheduled for today (found more viruses in mammalian genomes that are NOT retroviral. Its EBOLA AND MARBURG. IN GENOMES.) but theres no point in posting it right now because everyone is freaking out about Pepsi.
Im not sacrificing a cool post to a blog drama moment.
So, for now, heres a clip from this season of BULLSHIT, on fast food:
Keep freaking out, if you so desire.
sa smith | June 24, 2010HA!
Know how Lenny is finally getting his comeuppance for selling all that quack crap?
I got an anon comment this afternoon giving us a little update:
Dear Mr. :
This is to acknowledge receipt of your recent message left in my voice mail mailbox. We have opened a file on this matter and an investigation is under way.
NASA is committed to enforcing the requirements of Federal Law and Regulations concerning appropriate uses of our intellectual property. This includes prohibitions against use of the NASA Insignia (informally known as the "meatball") in any manner which would express or imply…
oracknows | June 15, 2010I don't know if I need to get out the infamous paper bag or--even worse--the Doctor Doom mask out yet. As you may recall (if you are a long time reader, anyway) is that the mind-numbing stupidity of certain MDs has driven me to want to hide my face in utter shame at the embarrassment caused by my fellow physicians. Most frequently, it has been everyone's not-so-favorite creationist neurosurgeon with dualist tendencies, Dr. Michael Egnor. So bad was he that I compared him one time to Deepak Chopra.
Damned if P.Z. hasn't led me to another highly embarrassing physician woo-meister. Worse, it's…
oracknows | May 29, 2010Damn! I knew I made my promise to myself not to write about vaccines again for at least a few days too soon! Whenever I do that, it seems, one of two things happens. Either something important happens that, having become, however it happened, the go-to blogger for commenting on the anti-vaccine movement, I can't ignore.
This is not what happened.
The second thing that happens whenever I make that promise to myself is that someone from the anti-vaccine movement writes something that's unintentional pure comic gold.
This is what happened.
Someone named Curt Linderman, Sr. characterized the…
oracknows | May 27, 2010I've written about the credulous mass of misinformation that is TV's The Doctors before. As you might imagine, I'm not impressed with the quality of the medical information that is dispensed on this show. It's everything I hate about glitzed up medicine as TV entertainment, particularly the vacuously beautiful hosts. I thought Dr. Stork and his merry band of bubble-brained doctors had hit their low point, but I was wrong. Earlier this week, they appeared to be extolling the claimed virtues of (or at least not treating particularly skeptically the claims for)--of all things--urine therapy. Don…
sa smith | May 27, 2010If you want to stab yourself in your face, AutismOne has a live-stream for their speakers available:
Free live streaming by Ustream
Im watching some presentation now (dial-up, w00t!). This woman (Laurette Janak, qualifications: Mom) is 'teaching' Paul Offit some 'science' with cartoon figures. She is really sciencey and not even remotely crazy. Quote someone in the chatroom "She really knows her stuff!" LOL!
*wanders into the kitchen to find a knife for face stabbing*
sa smith | May 27, 2010My bestest buddy on planet Earth, HIV Denier and snake-oil peddler Lenny Horowitz, finally caught the attention of the FDA for the crap he is selling on his websites (full warning letter below the fold):
May 11, 2010
OVERNIGHT MAIL
RETURN RECEIPT REQUESTED
In reply refer to Warning Letter SEA 10-22
Dr. Leonard G. Horowitz
Healthy World Distributing, LLC
206 North 4th Avenue, Suite #147
Sandpoint, Idaho 83864
Jacqueline G. LindenBach
Mary Johnson
Healing Celebrations, LLC
217 Cedar Street, #326
Sandpoint, Idaho 83864
WARNING LETTER
Dear Dr. Horowitz, Ms. LindenBach and Ms. Johnson:
This is to…
oracknows | May 27, 2010I don't mean to beat up on Dr. Michael Fitzpatrick. I really don't. I realize I rather harshly criticized him yesterday for being so hostile to the concept of "denialism," to the point where he characterized even the use of the term as a means of "suppressing" free speech. Normally, that criticism would have been enough. If Dr. Fitzpatrick answered, that would be all well and good; if he didn't, I'd move on and forget about it. Unfortunately, I was made aware of another article he published at his usual gig at Spiked Online entitled Censorship is not the answer to health scares.
Damn if it…
oracknows | May 26, 2010I've had a lot of fun thus far this week expressing more than a bit of schadenfreude over Andrew Wakefield's being ignominiously stripped of his medical license in the U.K. by the General Medical Council, not to mention pointing out the quackfest that is Autism One, I feel the need for a brief break from the anti-vaccine craziness. This is as good a time as any to take care of some leftover business from last week that I had planned on writing about but gotten distracted by all the deliciously bad news for the anti-vaccine movement. Besides, what will be going on in Grant Park in Chicago this…
oracknows | May 23, 2010Andrew Wakefield's back, and he's sure trying to come back big.
I knew when I last wrote about his utter humiliation and disrepute that he wouldn't stay away for long. In fact, he stayed away longer than I thought--a whole three months. Unfortunately, though, he appears to be on a full media blitz to try to rehabilitate his image in the wake of his having been found to have committed research misconduct, leading to The Lancet retracting his article that started the anti=vaccine MMR scare back in 1998, which further led to NeuroToxicology withdrawing his execrably bad "monkey business" study…
oracknows | May 15, 2010Every so often, I hear the complaint from some readers, usually in the context of complaining about my posting style on issues I care a lot about, such as countering the anti-vaccine movement or pseudoscientific alt-med modalities, that I'm just "preaching to the converted" and not changing any minds. While there may be some element of that, it's not true that I don't change minds. In the context of the subject of yesterday's post, however, I realize that changing people's minds is very hard, because we humans have numerous defense mechanisms to deflect such efforts.
When I hear such charges…
sa smith | May 14, 2010A while back I wrote about how the lead researcher at the Whittemore Peterson Institute, Judy Mikovits, is speaking at Autismone, a huge anti-vax rally in Chicago later this month.
I thought Judy was just a crank. Dime a dozen, whatevs.
Turns out things are worse than that.
Much much worse than that.
Its cranks all the way down.
Vincent Lombardi, first author on the original 'XMRV causes Chronic Fatigue' Science paper, founded some weird testing company several years back. This weird testing company was then bought by Harvey Whittemore (father of The Princess That Cant Be Named), and turned…
oracknows | May 14, 2010
"I don't want knowledge. I want certainty!"
--David Bowie, from Law (Earthlings on Fire)
If there's one universal trait among humans, it seems to be an unquenchable thirst for certainty. This should come as no surprise to those committed to science and rational thinking because there is a profound conflict between our human desire for certainty and the uncertainty of scientific knowledge. The reason is that the conclusions of science are always provisional. They are always subject to change based on new evidence. Although by no means the only reason, clearly this craving for certainty the…
oracknows | May 10, 2010Now here's a project of which I entirely approve: Its an Encyclopedia of American Loons. It's up to seven as of this writing, including Mike Adams (of course!), who is characterized as "Complete loon, flamingly stupid, extremely paranoid, a zealot and a fraud; his influence is probably limited but given just a small base of followers he could wreak some havoc," and HIV/AIDS denialist Mohammed Al-Bayati, who is characterized as "Self-unaware belligerent zealot, victim of extreme confirmation bias; impact uncertain." Of course, both of these loons have been featured right here on this very blog…
oracknows | May 7, 2010
Remember Life Technology� Back when I actually used to do Your Friday Dose of Woo each and every Friday before subjecting myself to such woo-tastically extravagant bits of unreason every week led me to decide to cut my weekly feature back to on an "as the mood strikes me" basis, Life Technology produceds some of the finest installments of this recurring series. Who could forget Vir-X⢠homeopathic boner pills? Or the the Ultra Advanced Psychotronic Money Magnet Professional Version 1.0� Or the Tesla Purple Energy Shield� Good times, for sure.
As I sat down last night to decide upon a…
oracknows | May 6, 2010Anyone who's been reading this blog for any length of time longer than a few weeks knows what I think of Deepak Chopra. Indeed, he's been a recurring topic here since the very beginning (just type his name into the search box for this blog if you don't believe me). In fact, Chopra has "distinguished" himself by becoming a fairly recurring target on ScienceBlogs in general and a number of skeptical blogs, including SkepChick and NeuroLogica Blog. The reason should be obvious. No one--and I mean no one--lays down the quantum dualistic woo the way that Deepak can. Whether it be abusing genetics…
oracknows | April 27, 2010...is to be among the 5 most fraudulent psychics of all time.
Still, this is as good an excuse as any to post one of my all time skeptical demolitions, namely that of Uri Geller on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson:
Yeah, now that's an oldie but a goodie.
Still, I wonder: Who are the young, up and coming psychic frauds? After all, the psychics listed above are all getting rather old, and one of them's been dead a long time. Who makes up the next generation of psychic frauds?
oracknows | April 26, 2010If there's one thing Christians tell us, it's that Jesus is inside each and every one of us. Who knew that this was literally true? Don't believe me? Take a look at this MRI:
Apparently they've been wrong all these years when they said that Jesus lives in every man's heart. He actually lives in the lung. I guess that's all the more reason for smokers to quit smoking. You wouldn't want to smoke out Jesus, would you?
At least this sort of pareidolia makes it difficult for believers to show up to worship, although if this patient's identity is ever revealed it wouldn't surprise me if he…
oracknows | April 23, 2010If there's one thing that has irritated me (one might even say, irritated me enough to start this blog), it's ideology or religion trumping science. Perhaps the most annoying form of this disease is the tendency of the right wing whackosphere to do everything and anything it can to distort and twist science to agree with its ideology, in particular its religion. One area that I used to write about a lot but don't so much anymore (we bloggers have to subspecialize, I guess, and these days my subspecialty is science-based medicine with only the occasional forays against forms of unreason other…
oracknows | April 15, 2010Although this blog is not the Denialism Blog, there is no doubt that one of the overarching themes of Respectful Insolence has been, since its very beginning, combatting science denial. Go back to the very beginning and read a couple of my earliest posts, dating way back to 2004. In one of them I discussed cancer cure testimonials and why they are almost never evidence of efficacy of a given alt-med therapy, a post that, in my ever-insolent opinion, holds up with anything I write today. In another one, I wondered how intelligent people could use alt-med, and in another one I discussed "…