Skepticism/Critical Thinking
oracknows | February 7, 2008Nooooo!
I thought I might be safe. It's been a really long time since I've had to hang my head in shame and contemplate covering it with a paper bag because of creationist pontifications of a fellow physician bringing shame upon our shared profession. It had even been longer since I had dealt with Dr. Geoffrey Simmons, a particularly clueless "intelligent design" creationist. And don't even get me started on the whole "Physicians and Surgeons Who Dissent from Darwinism" silliness started by the Discovery Institute.
Now P.Z. Myers informs me that Dr. Simmons is back and dumber than ever…
oracknows | February 6, 2008...when it comes to "9/11 Truthers":
(Click on the picture for the rest of the cartoon.)
You know, the same thing could be said about creationists, HIV/AIDS denialists, and many "CAM" mavens.
oracknows | February 1, 2008Water.
It's the essence of life. Our bodies are mostly made up of it, and we can't live without it for very long. Our cells both contain it and are bathed in it. The enzymatic reactions necessary for life require an aqueous solution to work. Don't think these facts have escaped the woo-meisters, either. Water woo is a a long time favorite of woo-meisters everywhere. Indeed, it began with the "water cure" favored by the ancient Greeks and Romans, who could be forgiven for coming up with it, given that they had very little idea of how human physiology actually worked and at the very least it…
oracknows | January 31, 2008Ack!
The new Skeptic's Circle is here! Yes, the 79th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle has convened over at Podblack Blog, and it's another great collection of skeptical blogging. So why am I disturbed? I just realized that I've utterly failed in my organizer duties in that I totally forgot to submit one of my own posts to the Circle. The shame! Even worse, the Circle's just fine without me; if I hadn't pointed it out I doubt that anyone would have noticed that I hadn't submitted anything.
So why point it out?
Actually, in a way it's a very good thing. It just goes to show that the Skeptics'…
oracknows | January 29, 2008In nondescript dressing room in a nondescript studio in a nondescript office building in in a nondescript industrial park, a short, pudgy 63-year-old man with the stereotypical demeanor of a particularly boring economist was trying to squeeze into a pair of shorts.
"Why oh why did I agree to do this?" he muttered in a whining drone.
He continued to struggle to get into the black shorts, virtually identical to the ones worn by English schoolboys and still worn by Angus Young of AC/DC on stage. Even though Young is over 50, somehow he managed to get into them, and so will I, thought the man.…
oracknows | January 25, 2008
One of the favorite failings in logic and science among the woo-friendly crowd is the ever-famous one of confusing correlation with causation, also known as non causa pro causa, which means "non-cause for the cause." Examples of this are rampant, and include the antivaccinationists who confuse correlation with vaccination and the age at which autism is usually first recognized with vaccines causing autism, taking a homeopathic remedy shortly before having their symptoms resolve spontaneously and mistaking this for the efficacy of the homeopathic remedy, chelating children with autism and…
oracknows | January 24, 2008Word of the day: "Quackademic medicine." I love it.
Dr. R.W. explains.
I very well may have to steal that term. As they say about artists, good ones borrow but great ones steal. (Just living up to the arrogance of my namesake...)
oracknows | January 24, 2008...because then I could attend Dr. David Colquhoun's lecture at the University of Toronto tomorrow.
Dr. Colquhoun, for those not familiar with him, is the eminent pharmacologist with the name that is exceedingly difficult to remember how to spell who runs DC's Improbable Science, an excellent skeptical, scientific, and medical blog that routinely takes on dubious medical and scientific claims. A while back, his university (the University College of London) kicked his blog off its servers in response to complaints by disgruntled "alternative" therapists who did not like his science-based take…
oracknows | January 18, 2008Things are crazy now for me, both at home and at work. I mean really, really crazy. So crazy that even I, one of the most verbose bloggers out there, am forced to take two or three days off from my little addiction--I mean habit. Consequently, having foreseen that this time would come around these dates, I, Orac, your benevolent (and, above all verbose) blogger have thought of you, my readers. I realize the cries and lamentations that the lack of fresh material inevitably causes. That, I cannot completely obviate. However, I can ease the pain somewhat, and I can do this by continuing my…
oracknows | January 17, 2008Things are crazy now for me, both at home and at work. I mean really, really crazy. So crazy that even I, one of the most verbose bloggers out there, am forced to take two or three days off from my little addiction--I mean habit. Consequently, having foreseen that this time would come around these dates, I, Orac, your benevolent (and, above all verbose) blogger have thought of you, my readers. I realize the cries and lamentations that the lack of fresh material inevitably causes. That, I cannot completely obviate. However, I can ease the pain somewhat, and I can do this by continuing my…
oracknows | January 17, 2008It's that time again.
The Skeptics' Circle has once again descended upon the blogosphere to try to do battle with the rampant credulity therein and by bringing a whiff of skepticism and critical thinking into what is, sadly, a free-for-all of posting first and asking questions later. Hard as it is to believe, the Circle has been existence for three years now, and, in fact, the very first edition first appeared on February 3, 2005 on the blog of its founder, St. Nate, who sadly has given up blogging and, even more sadly, has deleted his blog so that it has now become a spam blog. Over the…
oracknows | January 16, 2008File this under You Can't Make Stuff Like This Up.
Just when I think People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) can't get any more zany or ridiculous in its never-ending battle against meat eating, it comes up with a gem like sending a request to the jail where a cannibal killer is being held requesting a vegetarian diet for him:
Sheriff's officials were astounded Thursday by a letter requesting the man accused of murdering his girlfriend and possibly participating in cannibalism be placed on a vegetarian diet to keep him from being "involved in any senseless killing" while…
oracknows | January 11, 2008Well, 2008 is off to a great start with the Skeptics' Circle. It's fast approaching the time to see if the momentum can be maintained.
Yes, it won't be long before the next Skeptics' Circle comes around the pike. Indeed, the next meeting of the Skeptics' Circle will appear on Thursday, January 17 and will be hosted by the Skeptical Surfer. As always, the guidelines for submissions to the Circle are here. Help him maintain the momentum and produce the second great Skeptics' Circle of the new year.
If you're interested in hosting a Circle yourself, check out the schedule and the guidelines for…
oracknows | January 11, 2008
If there's one thing I've learned about woo in the more than a year and a half that I've been doing this regular Friday feature, it's that there's definitely a religious element to virtually all woo. In essence, it requires believing in something that cannot be demonstrated scientifically, often despite science outright refuting it. For example, there have been several "victims" (I mean subjects) for this Friday feature that have been explicitly fundamentalist Christian in nature1, 2, 3, 4, even a parody of such beliefs. Of course, if you're a New Age-type woo, you wouldn't call it "…
oracknows | January 4, 2008
Vibrations.
After a year and a half of doing Your Friday Dose of Woo every week with only a couple of breaks, it's all I can feel or hear sometimes.
Vibrations.
What is it about woo and "vibrations," "harmonics," or "waves," anyway? It doesn't matter if it's sound waves or electromagnetic waves. Somehow the denizens of Woo World seem to think that vibrations have special powers beyond what physicists tell us that they have, such as the ability to transmit energy. Hardly a week goes by, it seems, when I don't encounter claims by woo-meisters such as being able to "raise cellular vibration"…
oracknows | January 2, 2008Any Oklahoma City skeptics out there reading this?
I just found an event that could use the presence of some actual science-minded individuals to refute the nonsense that's going to be there. It's an event called Educate Before You Vaccinate, and it's happening on January 19.
Looking at the pamphlet advertising the event, I see the standard antivaccination lies about vaccines causing autism and some really dumb pseudoscientific blather about how a "genetic epidemic" of autism is impossible. The keynote speaker will be April Renée, keynote speaker for Vaccine Injured Children (VIC) and…
oracknows | December 29, 2007...I find it rather amazing that after all these months I'm still getting a steady, constant stream of traffic, probably at least a couple of dozen visits a day, to this old post from Your Friday Dose of Woo, all coming from this discussion on the JREF forums.
That forum must get a lot of traffic. Who knew there'd be such interest in Kinoki "detox" footpads?
oracknows | December 28, 2007Orac's circuits have yet to recover from the assault on his logic circuits caused by the über-woo of a couple of weeks ago, coupled with the even more powerful woo two weeks before that. Consequently, in order to marshal additional time scour the Internet for only the finest woo to be featured in 2008, he has decided that Your Friday Dose of Woo will take a brief but well-earned holiday hiatus. Fear now, however! There will, however, be at least one, if not two, other posts today, and YFDoW will return in 2008, bigger and badder than ever.
In the meantime, now that Christmas has passed,…
oracknows | December 27, 2007It figures.
Some of the most interesting questions and posts showed up right before Christmas, just the time when I didn't have time to discuss and (hopefully) expand upon them. Neither, I'm guessing, did anyone else, which is unfortunate because this post was about an issue worth further discussion in the skeptical blogosphere. I'm talking about a post in which fellow ScienceBlogger Martin Rundkvist made this rather provocative observation about skepticism:
A discussion in the comments section of the recent Skeptics' Circle reminded me of something I learned only after years in the skeptical…