Skepticism/Critical Thinking
oracknows | June 18, 2008David L. Katz, MD, MPH, FACPM, FACP, Adjunct Associate Professor of Public Health at Yale University is not happy.
No, he is not happy at all. Specifically, he is not happy with the skeptical blogosphere. He apparently feels that we nasty, close-minded skeptics have been so very unfair in our discussions of him. Specifically, he is not happy how several of us have called him to task for his remarks at the 1st Annual Integrative Medicine Scientific Symposium held in April at Yale University. In particular, what stood out (and provoked the sarcasm and contempt of several bloggers devoted to…
oracknows | June 15, 2008John Le Sainte apparently has a rather inflated view of himself. You see, he seems to think that he's the heir to Nostradamus. Ever worth a giggle on a Sunday afternoon (or any other time, for that matter), he seems to think that, channeling Nostradamus in some fashion, he's predicted what will be discovered to be the cause of autism:
I have had over 30 e-mails requesting if I had seen into the future and discovered why Autism is becoming epidemic now. Yes, I have. This is what I know from the visions as guided by my guardian and teacher Nostradamus.
An interesting fact will become known in…
oracknows | June 14, 2008Some of you may have heard of John Scudamore's Whale.to site. I've referred to it in the past as a repository of some of the wildest and most bizarre "alternative" medicine claims out there. However, I will admit that I've only ever scratched the surface of the insanity that is Whale.to.
Kathleen Seidel has dug deeply into the madness.
It goes far beyond what even I had thought. She found parts of the website that I had never known to exist. For example, the complete text of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is there. There's also the complete text of Maniacal World Control Thru The Jesuit…
oracknows | June 13, 2008It's that time again.
Round and round the Skeptics' Circle goes, coming rapidly around to arrive yet again in less than a week. This time around, it's set to land on next Thursday, June 19 at Ionian Enchantment. Blog-specific instructions for submitting your pearls of skepticism, science, and critical thinking can be found here, and more general instructions can be found here. So, if you're a blogger who regularly likes to apply reason, skepticism, and critical thinking to dubious claims, get cracking and send Mike your best stuff before Wednesday! And, as always, if you're such a blogger…
oracknows | June 13, 2008
Hard as it is to believe, this little weekly vanity project of mine, this little weekly excursion into the wild and wacky world of woo, is fast approaching two years of existence. Really. I kid you not. This wouldn't really disturb me so much except that I had been rather hoping to do a special anniversary edition of Your Friday Dose of Woo in a couple of weeks, but I really don't have anything suitable. No, it's not that I don't have lots of woo in the infamous Folder of Woo. There's stuff there for the foreseeable future. It's just that I'm like a little kid. When a really, really good…
sa smith | June 9, 2008Its no secret that there is an ongoing (though thoroughly stupid) 'battle' between MDs and PhDs. "Ur too dumb to get into med shcool!" "Ur a friggen mechanic!" "I cure duhseesehs!" "U do not! We cure, U dispense!" Blah blah blah its funny sometimes, but it gets old too.
But now it just got funny again.
Guess who just got 'permission' to be called a 'doctor' in Minnesota?
Naturopaths.
LOL!
I have a feeling the bickering between MDs and Phds will come to a screeching halt as we team together to get this dangerous move reversed.
Remember my debate with Lenny? Remember when he went postal when…
oracknows | June 6, 2008I'm tired.
I apologize in advance if I'm not as--shall we say?--energetic as usual this week. I'm sure you'll understand. After all, I just spent the last three days subjecting myself to the most toxic and concentrated woo known to humankind. If you're a regular reader here, you clearly know what I'm talking about, namely Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey's "Green Our Vaccines" rally on Wednesday in Washington, D.C. Fortunately, it wasn't as large as attended. Although its organizers claim that 8,000 showed up, more realistic estimates were maybe around 1,000. Maybe. Even better, the media hardly…
oracknows | June 5, 2008I must admit that I was getting a bit worried. Morning came today, and there was no Skeptics' Circle. I went to work. Every so often throughout the day I checked again.
Still no Skeptics' Circle, at least as of early afternoon.
I got home from work around 8 PM, and to my relief, there it was in all its usual glory, a bright, shiny new edition of the Skeptics' Circle over at Jyunri Kankei. And, boy, after subjecting myself to all the idiocy of the "Green Our Vaccines" rally over the last three days, I sure did need a cool, soothing dose of critical thinking, science, and reason. So head on…
oracknows | June 2, 2008Even here at the ASCO meeting, I couldn't help but be made aware (thanks to Steve Novella and others) about a brand-spanking new video of a supposed encounter with an alien that--unlike all the other dubious videos of alleged alien encounters--according to its maker will really and truly convince you that, really and truly, Aliens Are Real And Earth Has Been Visited by them. Why, you may ask, would I blog about such things when I'm at a meeting? Well, writing about clinical science is hard, and I haven't had time to analyze the abstracts that I wanted to analyze, and blogging about this is…
oracknows | June 1, 2008In the nearly two years of its existence, I have strived to feature only the finest and most outrageous woo that I can find. It's mostly been medical quackery but sometimes it's other topics as well. Oddly enough, the vast majority of the woo featured nearly every week never attracts the attention of any regulatory bodies. Given the hilariously, extravagantly pseudscientific or spiritual claims made to support some of these devices, it's hard to image how so many of them never attract the loving attention of the Food and Drug Administration or the counterpart of the FDA in other countries in…
oracknows | May 30, 2008If there's one thing I've learned over the last couple of years of doing this little feature, it's that there are a couple of kinds of woo. Actually, there are certainly more than a couple, but pretty much all woo can be divided into a couple of types. The first time is where the woo is based on no science at all, but rather mysticism or some other religious or "spiritual" force. This may or may not be combined with the physical or with some sort of scientific or pseudoscientific explanations to justify it, but at its very heart the woo far more religion than science. Then, there's another…
oracknows | May 29, 2008Sometimes I wonder if subjecting myself to all this woo is going to my head. Why do I worry that this might be the case? Recently, I made the mistake of getting involved in an e-mail exchange with a prominent antivaccinationist. Perhaps it was my eternal optimism that led me to do this, my inability to believe that any person in the thrall of pseudoscience, no matter how far gone and how active in harassing anyone who counters him, can't be somehow saved and brought around to understand the value of science and why their previous course was wrong. Such efforts on my part almost inevitably end…
oracknows | May 27, 2008If there's one thing that quacks and cranks share in common, it's that they do not like scrutiny, particularly by people with some scientific knowledge. Indeed, when confronted with scientists or educated lay people who can challenge their crankery, it's amazing how they react the same way almost every time; they try to silence or--if you will--expel the person who challenges their world view. That's because they want to control their message and operate within the confines of their cozy world, where never is heard a discouraging--and especially never critical--word. Most of all, they never,…
oracknows | May 27, 2008As a physician and scientists who's dedicated his life to the application of science to the development of better medical treatments, I've often wondered how formerly admired scientists and physicians degenerate into out-and-out cranks. I'm talking about people like Peter Duesberg, who was once an admired scientist thought to be on track for a Nobel Prize; that is, until he became fixated on the idea that HIV does not cause AIDS. True, lately he's been trying to resurrect his scientific reputation with his chromosomal aneuploidy hypothesis of cancer, but, alas, true to form he's been doing it…
sa smith | May 25, 2008During last weeks Battle of the Titans, I got several comments and emails from readers with the same question:
Where do these kooks come from? How do you go from being a PhD, or MD, or DDS, and turn into a complete whackjob?
Well, I cant say what Horowitzs deal is. That is the job of a mental health professional. And it would be rather pretentious of me to talk about the sociological/educational/cultural forces behind HIV Denialism in Africa/homosexual community/society at large. I could guess, but thats not my specialty either.
What I can comment on is how science/scientists operate, and…
oracknows | May 25, 2008Epi Wonk has completed part II of her deconstruction of the latest abuse of epidemiology and statistics by those pseudoscientists for the mercury militia, Mark and David Geier. (I commented on part I here):
Pretty steep slopes and, therefore, apparently strong associations. But there's no attempt to control for, or adjust for, the confounding effect of birth cohort. Just one look at Figure 1 (or a basic knowledge about trends in autism) tells you the regression coefficients (slopes) are being driven by increases in autism risk over time. Given the increase in frequency of autism (and other…
oracknows | May 22, 2008You know, after over three years of existence and nearly two years that I've been entrusted with the responsibility of organizing it, I thought I had seen pretty much every possible permutation of how the Skeptics' Circle could be hosted. We've had cartoons, soda machines, stories, raucous meetings in pubs, and a whole bunch of other cool ideas, mixed in with some "just the facts, m'am," straight ahead hosting. But there's one permutation we haven't had yet:
A Dirty Limericks edition. Now, thanks to Akusai at Action Skeptics, we do. Even better, it's the usual excellent crop of skeptical…
oracknows | May 17, 2008Believe it or not, even I, Orac, sometimes get tired of blogging about antivaccination idiocy. Indeed, this week was just such a time. I hope you can't blame me. After all, the last few months have been so chock-full of some of the most bizarre and annoying antics of antivaccinationists at such a frequent clip that there was just no way I could even keep up with it, and trying was starting to burn me out. (I guess there's only so much that the stupid can burn before even Orac's nearly indestructible clear plastic case can handle before he needs a break.) Truth be told, not wanting Respectful…
oracknows | May 16, 2008This week was difficult.
No, it wasn't difficult because I had hit one of my periodic woo writer's blocks that I whine about, no doubt to the occasional annoyance of my readers, even though I have one of the greatest hobbies in the world. I mean, I get to do something that I love (writing and blogging) and even get paid a nominal sum for doing it. Even better, this whole Respectful Insolence⢠thing has grown far beyond my wildest imaginings when more than three years ago, on winter's day in a deep and dark December, I experimented with Blogger on a whim and created the first incarnation of…