Skepticism/Critical Thinking
oracknows | September 3, 2007John is sick and tired of antievolutionists. Who can blame him? As he points out, they are utterly immune to evidence or reason:
I was wrong. Very wrong. Information isn't what makes people change their minds. Experience is, and generally nobody has much experience of the facts of biology that underwrite evolution. The so-called "deficit model" of the public understanding of science, which assumes that all they need is more information, is false.
I could also point out that this is the very reason that alternative medicine to this day so regularly trumps scientific, evidence-based medicine in…
oracknows | August 31, 2007...is still on vacation in London. It will return next week.
I will mention, however, that I managed to find time to take a stroll by the Royal London Homeopathic Hospital the other day. No, the fabric of space-time was not torn, but, sadly, I didn't work up the gumption to enter the building because I feared pressing my luck. It's one thing to stand outside the building and take a few pictures leaning against various signs; it's quite another to enter the belly of the beast itself. Such a mixing of skepticism and utter woo might be enough to cause a massive reaction, like matter and anti-…
oracknows | August 30, 2007From deep in the heart of London, even here on vacation, I couldn't forget to mention that the 68th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle has been posted by Martin over at Aardvarchaeology. This carnival is remarkable for two things: First for Martin's no nonsense style of presentation; and second, because, thanks to my vacation, I totally forgot to submit anything to the Circle, making it perhaps the first Circle in two years that is totally Orac-free. Fortunately, I'm redundant, and the Circle is great without any contributions by me. Unfortunately, I'm redundant, and the Circle is great without…
oracknows | August 29, 2007Vacation time! While Orac is off in London recharging his circuits and contemplating the linguistic tricks of limericks and jokes or the glory of black holes, he's rerunning some old stuff from his original Blogspot blog. This particular post first appeared on June 15, 2005. Enjoy!
One of the criticisms of "intelligent design" (ID) creationism is that it doesn't really offer any new theory or even hypothesis to replace the theory of evolution, which it seeks to supplant (at least in the public schools). It merely exaggerates perceived weaknesses in evolutionary theory and misrepresents…
oracknows | August 23, 2007You know, even though I know he's been a Republican talker for a long time, that he worked for the Nixon administration as a speechwriter and lawyer, I've always kind of liked Ben Stein. My wife and I used to like to watch Win Ben Stein's Money, and he was quite amusing as the principal in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. He's always come across as a pleasant doofus, even though I know that image appears to be carefully calculated one.
Now I learn that he's the narrator and a driving force behind a pro-"intelligent design" movie called Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, which is due to be released…
oracknows | August 22, 2007It's been brought to my attention that Perry DeAngelis, regular contributor to The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe podcast, member of the New England Skeptical Society has passed away unexpectedly at far too young an age. I don't know any of the details, although as a regular listener to the Skeptics' Guide podcast I knew that he had been in the hospital for a while, although I had begun to wonder if it was more serious than it first seemed as his time in the hospital kept getting longer. I also know that it's almost as though I knew Perry, having listened to him almost every week for over a…
oracknows | August 22, 2007Fellow SB'er Tara Smith, and academic neurologist Steve Novella have written an essential primer on the dangerous pseudoscience and quackery that is HIV/AIDS denialism. It's published in PLoS and is entitled HIV Denial in the Internet Era.
It makes a number of excellent points about the deadly quackery that is HIV/AIDS denialism, including how its advocates portray science as "faith," shift the goalposts when asking for evidence for the HIV/AIDS hypothesis, and in general engage in all the same sorts of logical and scientific fallacies beloved by pseudoscientists and cranks like creationists…
oracknows | August 22, 2007Thanks to Blake, I now have The Enemies of Reason, Part 2:
My review of this episode is below the fold. I managed to BitTorrent the episode and watch it on my laptop on my flight back from Chicago last night. If you don't want to be influenced by my opinion before watching, watch the episode first and then see if you agree with my assessment.
Part 2 of Richard Dawkins' The Enemies of Reason, The Irrational Health Service, is, as you might imagine, right up my alley. Moreover, it's the stronger of the two parts of this documentary in many ways, although I think it continues the theme of…
oracknows | August 19, 2007Blog friend Abel over at Terra Sigillata pointed me to a story claiming that Oscar the Death Kitty, who became famous (or notorious) for his alleged ability to detect the impending death of residents of the nursing home at which he lives, so much so that some of the staff had even started calling family to tell them that time was short whenever the Grim Reaping Kitty curled up with their loved one, is no more:
PROVIDENCE, RI - Oscar, the nursing home cat who could seemingly sense the impending death of patients, was found dead early yesterday. The cat gained recent notoriety when reports of…
oracknows | August 17, 2007I knew it.
I knew it wouldn't be long before this happened. About three weeks ago, we had the Oscar the Death Cat, a.k.a. the kitty of doom. Given the discussions of animals and death and speculation that other animals might be able to "predict" impending death, you knew it was coming.
Behold the Doggy of Death:
His name is Scamp, and he lives at a nursing home in Ohio:
Scamp, a Schnauzer, lives at The Pines nursing home in Ohio - where his owner, a staff member, claims he has been present for the death of virtually every patient for the past three years. That's around forty deaths, twice…
oracknows | August 17, 2007So, after nearly two weeks of torturing myself trying to put together an R01-level grant on short notice and make it actually competitive, I'm finally free. The grant has been submitted (amazingly, the online submission process went through without a hitch), and, sleep-deprived but still hopped up on the Sudafed that kept the mucus membranes in my nasal passages from exploding outward at a high velocity, scattering watery goo everywhere.
Not a pretty sight when it happens, hence the Sudafed.
Fortunately, the pollen has subsided to the level where I am only mildly miserable, allowing my…
oracknows | August 16, 2007Yes!
As intelligent and powerful as he is, Orac has always lacked something, and that's mobility. He's always been more or less at the mercy of the humans with whom he travels when it comes to locomotion. In short, being a clear box of blinking lights, he has to be carried everywhere, sometimes in a rather undignified fashion:
In this week's edition of the Skeptics' Circle, Bronze Dog gives Orac exactly what he needs:
Yes, a giant robot! Controlling such awesome machinery directly, finally, Orac is unshackled from his dependence on irrational humans to take him where he wants to go!…
oracknows | August 16, 2007It's here, and it's on Google Video. I watched it last night, and it was a blistering attack on the irrationality that is so common in our society:
Part I begins with Richard Dawkins sitting in on some sort of New Age chanting ceremony (the discomfited look on his face is priceless to watch), after which he goes to a New Age fair, and concludes with an attack on the crappy science that lead to the MMR vaccine scare over autism in the U.K. In between, Dawkins takes on astrology, dowsers, spiritualists, and mediums, no holds barred.
Next Monday: Richard Dawkins versus alternative medicine.…
oracknows | August 15, 2007Remember a couple of months ago, when I discussed testimony at the Autism Omnibus trial that showed how Andrew Wakefield had failed to do the controls when running PCR that would have revealed that the results that he interpreted as the presence of the measles virus from a vaccine strain in the guts of autistic children was nothing more than a bunch of false positives due to widespread contamination of the laboratory with plasmid containing measles sequences?
It turns out that it's not just autism pseudoscientists who forget to do the right controls when running PCR. Mike the Mad Biologist…
oracknows | August 14, 2007Via Pure Pedantry, I've become aware of a post that resonates over here, given the recent series of posts I did about a certain comic who, unable to dispute the science behind global warming or the health hazards of secondhand smoke in any serious way, has a penchant for labeling scientists who support such positions and think that indoor smoking should be banned as fascists (or Maoist), power hungry, bureaucrats who don't view people as individuals, geeks who got beat up on the dodgeball court and are now taking their revenge, or avid players of role-playing games such as Dungeons &…
oracknows | August 11, 2007This is disturbing.
Yesterday, I did a rather light-hearted edition of Your Friday Dose of Woo about "ionic foot detoxification." A reader pointed out that in a story in which Randi had also discussed this woo, there was a comment along the lines of "I think autistic children should really do this."
How prophetic! Sadly, it turns out that autistic children are already being subjected to this woo. For example, I found this particular video on YouTube that has to be seen to be believed:
It's a woman named Ashley discussing "ion cleanse" foot detox for her 4 year old autistic son Braden. Her…
oracknows | August 10, 2007Don't forget, everybody, that the 67th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle is due to land at The Bronze Blog on Thursday, August 16. Bronze Dog will host. As you may know, Bronze Dog is the creator of a great list of "doggerel" commonly used by the credulous to defend pseudoscience or the paranormal. It's up to 117 items as of this writing and is a great resource whenever you come across...well, doggerel directed at you to attack your use of skepticism and critical thinking.
The instructions for submitting to this week's carnival are here. If you don't know what blog carnivals or The Skeptics'…
oracknows | August 10, 2007After over a year of doing Your Friday Dose of Woo, I can't believe I've never come across this one before. Sometimes there's a bit of woo that comes my way that's so off the wall, so unexpected, the claims for which are so unrelated to reality that it startles even me. Moreover, unlike truly over-the-top woo like quantum homeopathy, DNA activation, or the SCIO, this one is utterly brilliant in the simplicity of its concept. It also makes me wonder about whether certain alties have a thing about feet. We know they have a thing about "detoxification" (without, of course, ever being able to…
oracknows | August 9, 2007Somehow, I don't know how, I managed to wind up on the mailing list of über-woomeister Dr. Joseph Mercola, who's almost as bad as Mike Adams, only less blatantly crazy in pushing conspiracy theories.
Yesterday, I received this pitch by e-mail:
I've got a quick question for you:
How does your energy compare to the salmon swimming and jumping upstream for hundreds of miles?
Facing tremendous obstacles -- fish ladders, rapids, predators -- they swim and jump for hundreds of miles to complete their incredible journey (without eating along the way).
Could it be that their ocean diet gives them…
oracknows | August 9, 2007I'm a bit cranky right now.
Long time readers are familiar with the logorrhea that usually characterizes this blog. Fans love it; detractors hate it, Some may have noticed a bit of paucity of blogging, at least relatively speaking. There's a good reason for this. Not only was I out of town last weekend, but I got to come back to be on call (i.e. on service) for the group while at the same time trying to finish a grant application that my institution had "honored" with a nomination to fill out--only two weeks before it was due. Yes, now is not a great time to be around Orac; his crankiness is…