Skepticism/Critical Thinking
oracknows | October 31, 2007Having gotten into the whole idea of blogging about peer-reviewed research yesterday and even using a spiffy new icon to denote that that's what I'm doing, originally I had planned on looking up another interesting article or pulling one from my recent reading list and blogging about it. Then, realizing that Breast Cancer Awareness Month is over after today, I happened to come across an article that reminds me of something that's appropriate for today, namely Halloween. Yes, it's that mercury maven of mavens, that tireless crusader who thinks he found that the Amish don't get autism and,…
oracknows | October 30, 2007...at least, that was my first reaction when I first read this reaction by the Karen Malec of the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer to posts by Mark Chu-Carroll and myself pointing out the numerous flaws in the latest "study" being circulated to "support" a link between abortion and breast cancer.
Then I thought about it. That post was one of my more ambitious posts, and it reached a length even greater than the usual Orac-ian standard of logorrhea to match its ambition. Indeed, the post took me two or three times longer to put together than the typical heapin' helpin' of Respectful…
oracknows | October 29, 2007Every so often, as a blogger, I get e-mail. Well, actually, I get a lot of e-mail, much of which I just don't have time to answer (nothing personal when it happens), but every so often an e-mail makes me feel as though Rod Serling should be popping up at the end. I got this one not too long ago:
From: "eric swan" (xxx@xxx.xxx)
To: oracknows@gmail.com
Subject: 911
Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2007 23:23:22 -0400
who are you, what are your motives and who are you working for?
Eric Swan @ xxx@yahoo.com.
Eric Swan happens to be a 9/11 Truther who's appeared in the comments before, spewing 9/11 conspiracy…
oracknows | October 29, 2007I was half-tempted to e-mail this one to P. Z. or Larry Moran, but my inherently merciful nature got the better of me. Because it was so idiotic, I was afraid that, after P. Z. and his regular readers got through with it (or even worse for this poor ID advocate, Larry Moran), there wouldn't be anything left other than a hint that there may have been a smear on the pavement where he had been. And, as much as this particular ID advocate and woo-meister has gotten on my nerves in the past outing me and all on at least three separate occasions, even I didn't want to see that. Besides, why should…
oracknows | October 27, 2007...I am as appalled as my fellow ScienceBlogger Mark over this horrifically credulous article on ghosts on This Old House at CNN.com. Here's a small taste, which comes after a long discussion of how to choose a "good" ghost inspector:
If natural explanations cannot be found, and it's determined that there is indeed a presence in your house, the investigators will likely suggest you get in touch with a family minister so he or she can come to the house and to pray for the soul of the spirit that is present. This is not an "exorcism," but simply an attempt to get the ghost to leave in peace.
If…
oracknows | October 26, 2007Some woo is very, very complicated. The reason, of course, is that the often self-contradicting complexity of this sort of woo serves to make it harder for people without specialized training to figure out easily that it makes no sense scientifically. It's more a matter of baffling 'em with bullshit than because such complexity is actually needed. (No one that I can think of personifies this better than Lionel Milgrom, a man who's a veritable poet of woo.) Other times, the concept behind the woo is simple. In fact, it's usually just one idea. In fact, this one idea is usually based on an…
oracknows | October 25, 2007This has been a bad week at skeptics' school. Apparently, skeptical bloggers have been misbehaving left and right. Apparently we as the skeptical blogosphere have been very, very naughty indeed. Worse, the essays that we've handed in are apparently not pleasing to the teacher. Worst of all, we've been mischievously copying a screed against homeopaths and dispersing it far and wide across the blogosphere. Fortunately, Le Canard Noir is there to oversee detention in the 72nd Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle over at the quackometer blog. Head on over to detention and see what's going on.
Also,…
oracknows | October 23, 2007Ever wonder what would happen if mendacious fake "psychic" Sylvia Browne ever met The Amazing Randi?
Now you know.
Sylvia just has to watch out for science.
oracknows | October 23, 2007Regular readers know that I've long been disturbed by the increasing infiltration of non-evidence-based "alternative" medical therapies into academic medical centers (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8). I've come across another example of how much this has occurred. This time around, it's come in the form of a "debate" being held at 2 PM on Thursday, October 25 at the University of Connecticut Health Center entitled Homeopathy: Quackery Or A Key To The Future of Medicine? It's being touted thusly:
On October 25, 2007, the University of Connecticut Health Center will be hosting a historic debate on…
oracknows | October 20, 2007I must lead a sheltered life, at least when it comes to the creationism-evolution wars.
Sure, I'm more than aware about how much creationists and their more common (these days, at least) bastard offspring "intelligent design" creationists like to cherry pick, twist, and mangle data to make it seem to support their case, or, when all else fails, just lie outright about it. That's no surprise to me. Neither is the mendacious manner in which creationists try to blame Darwin and evolutionary theory for Hitler and the Nazis, as well as the horrors of Stalin and Mao, and just about every other evil…
oracknows | October 19, 2007Don't forget, once again the time is fast approaching.
Soon yet another installment of the Skeptics' Circle will be upon us. In fact, it's less than a week away and due to land at the quackometer blog on Thursday, October 25. Our host this time has achieved a fair amount of notoriety by being the victim of an attempt by the Society of Homepaths, through the use of legal threats against his ISP, to silence his criticism against it for failing to do anything to enforce its own ethical standards. Sadly, Le Canard Noir's ISP folded and told him to take the post down. Quite predictably, this ham-…
oracknows | October 19, 2007DNA is an amazing molecule. How evolution could have, over eons, fashioned such an amazingly simple yet complex method of storing biological information and coding the proteins that carry out the functions of life is one of the great wonders of biology. Harnessing the power of DNA, through genetic engineering, the study of the genome, and epigenetics, has allowed scientists a deeper insight than ever before possible into diseases as diverse as cancer, cardiovascular disease, and inherited metabolic disorders, to name a few. I manipulate DNA in my laboratory, in order to make it do my bidding…
oracknows | October 18, 2007Whatever criticisms I may have had for prominent atheists like Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris otherwise, one area that I'm totally down with both of them on is their criticism of the undue respect and consideration we as a society give to religious ideas. This consideration is rarely, if ever, based on the merit of the ideas, but rather solely because they are religious ideas. Many of these ideas, if they were not based on religion, wouldn't be given anywhere near the respect or deference that they are now. But, because they are based on a faith in the supernatural, for some reason we as a…
oracknows | October 17, 2007One of my favorite phenomena that represents better than perhaps any other how humans are wired to look for patterns, whether there is a pattern there or not, is the phenomenon known as pareidolia. As a Catholic-turned-sort-of-heathen, in particular I like Virgin Mary pareidolia, and have blogged about multiple such incidents. Of course, the Virgin Mary is not the only sort of image seen in pareidolia. Jesus shows up quite frequently as well.
Now, would you believe that the late Pope John Paul II is showing up in flames? No, really:
This fiery figure is being hailed as Pope John Paul II…
oracknows | October 17, 2007I've written before about how one of the favorite tactics of those who do not like my insistence on applying skepticism, science, and critical thinking to the claims of alternative medicine or my refusal to accept a dichotomy between "alternative" and "conventional" medicine is to try so smear me as some sort of "pharma shill." It's happened so often ever since my Usenet days that I even sometimes joke about it preemptively sometimes when writing skeptical posts or make smart aleck comments asking where I can sign up to get those big checks from big pharma, given that they'd almost certainly…
oracknows | October 16, 2007Work and a conference intervene to prevent a fresh dose of Respectful Insolence today. Fortunately, there's still classic Insolence from the archives that hasn't been moved over to the new blog. This amusing little trifle originally appeared on August 25, 2005.
Well, I'm back.
Yes, I know I blogged a fair amount while on vacation, my promise to restrain myself notwithstanding. Nonetheless, with the exception of the posts about the traffic wreck that screwed up our trip home and the tragic death of an autistic boy receiving chelation therapy this week, it was mostly fluff or carnival barking.…
oracknows | October 14, 2007I was so busy mentioning how the Society of Homeopaths was using legal threats to try to shut down the free speech rights of the host of the next Skeptics' Circle, Le Canard Noir, that I forgot to mention that he also turned me on to a great web comic. The comic, Cectic, is highly unusual in that it is clearly a comic by a skeptic for skeptics. Some examples (click for a larger version):
Herbal cancer remedies:
Homeopathy:
Psychics:
Biblical "inerrancy":
"Intelligent design" creationism:
Astrology:
Cephalod abuse with alternative medicine (don't tell PZ):
And lots more.…
oracknows | October 12, 2007Woo-meisters will not be pleased. While perusing this week's Skeptics' Circle, I was reminded of something that I had meant to post about a couple of days ago.
I don't know how he did it or where he got it, but somehow he has found the Holy of Holies for woos everywhere. He found The Woo Handbook. In it, he finds the twenty main strategies for dealing with Skeptics. They're pretty much all there: shifting the goalposts, labeling skeptics as "close-minded," introducing quantum mechanics, and appeals to ignorance, along with #18, the technique of woos that probably annoys me the most (at least…
oracknows | October 11, 2007One of the biggest complaints from alternative medicine practitioners is that some vast cabal, presumably made up big pharma, the CDC, the NIH, the AMA, and "conventional" doctors, is "suppressing" alternative medicine. Yes, true believers like, say, Mike Adams will claim that big pharma is going to suppress their free speech about "alternatives" and thus deny you your "heath freedom," which is in reality the freedom of quacks to push quackery without being hassled by pesky things like government agencies requiring that practitioners practice evidence-based medicine.
So what happens when…
oracknows | October 11, 2007Yes, it's that time again, time for the latest edition of the Skeptics' Circle to land on the blogosphere like a nuclear explosion of reason, rationality, and science designed to demolish the credulity that is so rampant.
OK, I'm exaggerating a bit, but we here at the Skeptics' Circle do try to do our part for critical thinking.
This time around, the Circle is being hosted at Infophilia. In an unusual take on the Circle, this time around it's been presented as a series of puzzles that will challenge and (hopefully) amuse skeptics everywhere.
Get ye to the carnival!
Remember, too, that it won'…