Skepticism/Critical Thinking
oracknows | December 16, 2009Remember how yesterday I said that sometimes writing this blog depresses me? At the time, I made that observation because there are times when the unending constant onslaught of pseudoscience, anti-science, and woo leads me to despair that the human race will ever overcome its cognitive defects. However, there are other times when blogging depresses me. It's for an entirely different reason, though. There are times when people I admire, people who should know better, fall and fall hard. No, I don't mean Tiger Woods getting it on with a bunch of blondes. The level of horniness and lack of…
oracknows | December 12, 2009I've decided to chill this weekend after five years of insanity. However, while you anxiously await yet another hemidecade of Insolence, both Respectful and not-so-Respectful, what better way to do so than checking out the awesome Tim Minchin and his most excellent nine minute beat poem "Storm":
Who says skepticism and art don't mix?
oracknows | December 11, 2009
Has it really been that long?
It was a dismally overcast Saturday five years ago when, on a whim after having read a TIME Magazine article about how 2004 was supposedly the Year of the Blogger, I sat down in front of my computer, found Blogspot, and the first incarnation of Respectful Insolence was born. If anyone is curious, this was my first test post, and this was my first substantive post (well, sort of). Every year (at least the ones where I remember my blogiversary, I find it particularly interesting to go back to the beginning and see how true to my original vision for this blog I've…
oracknows | December 7, 2009The new UPSTF recommended guidelines for screening mammography of healthy women have opened up a can of worms whose consequences have not played out yet, indeed, likely will not play out for a long time. Coming in rapid succession after the announcement of the UPSTF guidelines was a study that suggested that low dose radiation from mammography may put young women with breast cancer-predisposing BRCA mutations at a higher risk for breast cancer. A consequence of the USPSTF recommendations is that politicians have pounced on it as "proof" that President Obama really is preparing death panels…
oracknows | December 2, 2009Alright, I'm officially tired of the latest Age of Autism outrage. So, while I wait for J.B. Handley to strike back (or not), let's move on to lighter subjects for a moment. And what better to cleanse the palate of the vision of cannibals eating babies as a metaphor for those who standup for science than a little pareidolia?
Yes, it's another Virgin Mary sighting, this time in a pancake:
Now, I've seen Jesus on a pancake. Heck, there's even a site dedicated to Jesus on pancakes. Besides, others have beaten this woman to seeing Mary on a pancake. This is actually a pretty lame Virgin Mary…
Deepak Chopra and his Choprawoo translated: "Skeptics, take my ill-informed speculations seriously!"
oracknows | December 1, 2009He's baaaack.
Deepak Chopra. Remember him? It's been a while since I've said much about him and him alone. True, I've gone after him this year when he joined up with three other major league woo-meisters Dean Ornish, Rustum Roy, and Andrew Weil to try to try to help Senator Tom Harkin hijack the health care overhaul bill currently before Congress. However, given that a couple of years ago, Chopra was the man for whose abuses of quantum theory, evolution, and "universal consciousness" ideas I coined the term "Choprawoo" and the only response ever needed to Choprawoo, it's been a while since I…
oracknows | December 1, 2009I debated whether or not to blog about this. The reason is that I suspect that gathering a lot of attention and controversy is exactly what Generation Rescue wanted when it posted what I'm about to blog about. On the other hand, no matter how low my opinion is of the principals who run Generation Rescue's anti-vaccine propaganda blog Age of Autism, there were limits below which they wouldn't go. Oh, sure, AoA has launched at least three broadsides at me over the last year and a half, all penned by the ever-offensive blowhard J.B. Handley, the founder of Generation Rescue who's allowed himself…
oracknows | November 30, 2009A couple of years ago, fellow ScienceBlogger Mark Hoofnagle over at Denialism Blog coined a most excellent term to describe all manners of pseuodscience, quackery, and crankery. The term, "crank magnetism," describes the tendency of cranks not to mind it when they see crankery in others. More specifically, it describes how cranks of one variety (for instance, HIV/AIDS denialists, will be attracted to another form of crankery (for instance, anti-vaccinationism or the 9/11 Truth movement) because, as Mark put it, cranks and pseudoscientists see themselves as iconoclasts, brave mavericks opposed…
oracknows | November 28, 2009The day before the Thanksgiving holiday, I wrote about a serious contender for the worst medical reporting of the year, if not the decade, specifically how credulous reporters had swarmed all over the case of a Belgian man named Rom Houben. If you don't remember or haven't heard about the details, feel free to peruse the link I just cited, but I'll give you the brief rundown. Basically, Rom Houben is an incredibly unfortunate man who was involved in a motor vehicle crash 23 years ago at age 23. As a result, he suffered a severe head injury and was diagnosed as being in a persistent…
oracknows | November 27, 2009I happen to be fortunate enough this year to have taken the Friday after Thanksgiving off, and it is a very good thing indeed. However, this morning, having indulged in the American tradition of stuffing myself full of turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and various other most excellent and hearty foods, all accompanied by some hearty ale. What that means is that I'm still suffering some of the after effects of food coma. What that further means for the blog is that I don't feel up to tackling something that will require me to exercise my neurons too much. So, in my food-induced haze, I asked…
oracknows | November 24, 2009Remember how I nominated a truly execrable local news report about Desiree Jennings as a serious contender for the worst reporting of the year, perhaps even of the decade? It had everything, and I seriously doubted that anything would challenge it for credulous supremacy any time soon.
How wrong I was. Check out this video:
Then read these stories:
'I screamed, but there was nothing to hear': Man trapped in 23-year 'coma' reveals horror of being unable to tell doctors he was conscious
Trapped 'coma' man: How was he misdiagnosed?
What a compelling story! Or is it? Let's find out by first…
oracknows | November 16, 2009In case you've forgotten, it's only two days until that festival of critical thinking, that feast of reason, The Skeptics' Circle to land over at Beyond the Short Coat. Instructions to submit can be found here.
Please help make this Circle another success!
oracknows | November 13, 2009
Things have been getting a bit serious around here. Of course, there's been a lot to get serious about, what with Suzanne Somers promoting cancer quackery, Generation Rescue exploiting a young woman with problems in order to promote its anti-vaccine agenda (leading to my "friend" J.B. Handley launching yet another hilariously off-base love letter to me), and my ruminations on the disappointment of cancer screening, things have gotten heavy to the point where they may be a bit of a downer. Add to that the fact that over the last week we've had one of the most persistent and annoying…
oracknows | November 5, 2009Over the last week or so, I've been confronted full bore with cranks, staring down the barrel, if you will, of a crank shotgun, one barrel being the anti-vaccine movement in general (with J.B. Handley and his misogyny being the buckshot, so to speak) and the other being Suzanne Somers and her despicable cancer quackery. Indeed, over the last five years, I've subjected myself to some of the most outrageous bits of unreason, conspiracy mongering, and pseudoscience. Be it the anti-vaccine movement, quacks, 9/11 Truthers, Holocaust deniers, creationists, or any of a variety of other bits of…
oracknows | November 3, 2009Be afraid. Be very, very afraid. After a prolonged wait, it's finally here:
Yes, my promotional copy of Suzanne Somers new book Knockout: Interviews with Doctors Who Are Curing Cancer--And How to Prevent Getting It in the First Place. (The Dalek was included because, well, I was just feeling perverse when I took this picture.)
I can only say that, after having perused the next couple of chapters after Chapter 1, I can already feel my brain melting and oozing out through my ears, screaming as the neuron-necrosing stupidity liquifies it. I've also noticed that, by and large, this book is…
oracknows | October 28, 2009Damn you, PZ!
Not only are you muscling into my territory (what, aren't creationism and atheism enough?), but you had to subject me to the most mind-numbing example of why homeopaths are the most clueless purveyors of pseudoscience there are! Behold, Dr. Charlene Werner, an optometrist (apparently) and a homeopath. I warn you, however. If you have any understanding of physics or chemistry whatsoever or if you've ever read (and liked) Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time (or anything else he's ever written), sit down now. Take a deep breath. Heck, crack open a bottle of wine and down at…
oracknows | October 26, 2009I was going to join PZ Myers, ERV, and Pamela Ronald in helping out an old blogging friend and former host of the Skeptics' Circle, Karl Mogel of The Inoculated Mind by pimping his other science-based blog Biofortified, which seeks to provide a science- and evidence-based discussion of plant genetics and genetic engineering. Unfortunately, as seems to be the case lately, other things have distracted me, and I'm late to the party. Better late than never, though.
Basically, Biofortified is in the Ashoka Changemakers contest, GMO Risk or Rescue. First prize is a $1500 grant and a conversation…
oracknows | October 19, 2009
I don't know how many of you have ever been to an Ikea, one the Swedish furniture stores that have sprouted across the U.S. over the last couple of decades, bringing Swedish design sensibility and off sized sheets to the the masses at affordable prices; that is, if you can stand the crowds. Apparently Jesus likes Ikea, too, as he has shown his holy visage at Ikea's Braehead outlet, near Glasgow. More specifically, Jesus has shown up on the door to the men's bathroom at that particular store. This provoked one of the best lines I've ever heard about a pareidolia experience:
Last night one…
oracknows | October 17, 2009I knew it! I knew there had to be an explanation that young earth creationists could come up with for all that evidence in support of evolution:
(WARNING: Borderline NSFW, depending on your job. Definitely offensive to fundamentalists.)
It's so obvious. Why didn't I think of it before?
oracknows | October 16, 2009I'm back.
If there's one thing I've noticed in the nearly five years that I've been doing this blog thing, it's that getting started again after taking even a few days off is hard. There's a bit of paralysis that sets in. I get used to not having to think about what I want to write, and often there are a number of things that I almost certainly would have written about. Fortunately, for at least one of them, PalMD took care of it it for me. Otherwise, the blogger whose post he deconstructed would have tasted a bit of the ol' not-so-Respectful Insolence for in essence laying down a load of po-…