Skepticism/Critical Thinking
oracknows | April 26, 2007On May 5 New York City will witness what will perhaps be the most unintentionally hilarious spectacle of two fundamentalists making utter fools of themselves:
MEDIA ADVISORY, April 26 /Christian Newswire/ -- After ABC ran a story in January about hundreds of atheists videotaping themselves blaspheming the Holy Spirit, best-selling author Ray Comfort contacted the network and offered to prove God's existence, absolutely, scientifically, without mentioning the Bible or faith. He and Kirk Cameron (co-hosts of an award-winning Christian TV program) challenged the two originators of the "…
oracknows | April 25, 2007A lot of readers (well, a couple, anyway) have been asking me about the recent article by Peter Duesberg in the most recent issue of Scientific American entitled Chromosomal Chaos and Cancer. I suppose it's because I'm not only a cancer surgeon (which in and of itself is not enough to qualify me to comment on this topic) but rather because I'm also a cancer researcher and a molecular biologist (which, I submit, does make me qualified to comment on this topic). Peter Duesberg, as you may know, is the controversial scientist who is perhaps the foremost advocate of the discredited hypothesis…
oracknows | April 23, 2007Mike, Mike, Mike...
What did I ever do to deserve this? Specifically, your remarks about our creationist neurosurgeon Dr. Michael Egnor:
In his "response," "Egnor" manages to completely distort pretty much everything about my article, in a way that is so ham-fistedly inept that it is simply impossible for me to continue to believe that the "Michael Egnor" articles are being written by a real person who really believes what he (or she) writes...It's been fun while it lasted, but the game's over now. Would whoever is really writing this stuff please take this opportunity to own up to it? Please…
oracknows | April 20, 2007I'm confused again about what appear to be mutually conflicting statements.
The Discovery Institute's favorite creationist neurosurgeon Dr. Michael Egnor two months ago on Pharyngula:
Perhaps a fable (not a just-so story!) will illustrate. Imagine that you, P.Z., were a student in 1925. You would study Darwinism fairly intensively as a high school student, undergrad, and med student (it's a hypothetical!). In high school you'd read Hunter's 'A Civic Biology' (unless you lived in Dayton, Tennessee), which taught the Darwinian superiority of the Nordic races and the need to eliminate the lesser…
oracknows | April 20, 2007
Pity poor Nikola Tesla.
A sure sign of the most potent woo is when the woo-meister responsible claims to base it on the work of a great scientists, particularly a great scientist who's been dead well over 60 years.
Like Nikola Tesla.
The deader the scientist is and the longer he or she's been dead, the more sure the woo-meister can be that only the few actual scientists who pay attention to woo and bother to refute will have the necessary background knowledge to refute it. Moreover, the longer ago the scientist lived, the less chance of any pesky relatives caring enough to tell the woo-…
oracknows | April 16, 2007...because he's sure as heck doing his best to cause it damage with his latest antievolution "broadsides," even to the point where it needs the loving ministrations of a neurosurgeon! His latest screeds produce in me a nearly irresistible urge to pound my head against the nearest hard surface to make the psychic pain stop. He's placing me in danger of real, physical pain, from epidural hematoma (in fact, I wonder if I'm in the middle of a lucid interval right now) to subdural hematoma to cerebral contusions.
First of all, regular readers may have noted that I haven't yet responded to the…
oracknows | April 15, 2007Heh.
Although it's apparently been making the rounds over the Internet, I had never seen this list before until Andrew over at Flavor Country posted A Dictionary for the 9/11 "Truth" Movement, which, if you've ever read the comment thread (223 comments!) after my one major foray into discussing the true idiocy that is the 9/11 "Truth" Movement, you will immediately realize to be pretty darned close to the truth.
A few key examples:
Alternative theory: Something so wacky that even Twoofers don't give it much credence (e. g. holographic planes, pods).
Brainwashing: non-conspiratorial thinking,…
oracknows | April 14, 2007Prometheus makes the case that our current age of unreason can be largely attributed to the Baby Boomers. As someone who can be viewed either as a very young Baby Boomer or a very old GenX-er, I nonetheless heartily agree with his clarion call near the end of his analysis:
Our society is growing more and more dependent on rationality, science and technology to keep it from collapsing. It's too late to turn back, now - giving up on reason and returning to magical thinking will cause a human (and probably environmental) catastrophe that would beggar the imagination. And, at the same time, the…
oracknows | April 13, 2007
Believe it or not, it's been almost nine months since, almost on a whim, I first started this little indulgence of mine known as Your Friday Dose of Woo, with some truly fine woo known as quantum homeopathy. Before you know it, we'll be celebrating a full year of woo. (Yes, I know that woo is eternal, and my little project represents a mere grain of sand on all the beaches of, for instance, California. If I'm going to be overwhelmed with woo and unreason, though, I might as well have a few laughs along the way.)
One thing I've noticed over these months is that there are definitely recurring…
oracknows | April 12, 2007If you ever want to wonder why I'm sometimes of the mind that the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine should be disbanded and its functions distributed among the other Institutes of the NIH, you just have to consider the sorts of woo-filled studies (like the Gonzalez protocol) funded by NCCAM mixed in among the more reasonable studies of herbal remedies and other modalities that have at least a modicum of scientific plausibility. With that in mind, I came across a study that seems to be getting a fair amount of play in the press, at least around here. The study purports…
oracknows | April 12, 2007It's that time again, and Geek Counterpoint has delivered the woo for you (and how!) in the 58th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle. Head on over for your fix of rational thought applied liberally to dubious claims, all expertly administered and arranged for your edification.
Next up is previous two-time host Pooflingers Anonymous. The Pooflinger himself, Matt, has done an absolutely fantastic job hosting twice before. Check out the 21st Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle and the 32nd Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle to get a taste of what he's capable of. That's why I fully expect the next Circle,…
oracknows | April 11, 2007This particular woman makes the case that she deserves the title:
I think she wins hands down, don't you? She must be one of those pollo-vegetarians. Because, after all, chickens aren't "animals."
oracknows | April 10, 2007I don't want to make this blog "all Egnor all the time." I know it's hard to believe, given my posting behavior recently, but really I don't. No matter how much the Discovery Institute's creationist neurosurgeon may embarrass the hell out of me as (I shudder to have to admit) a fellow surgeon, I've recently been trying to ration the rebuttals of his nonsense about evolution, and I note that I took one swipe at him yesterday. Even so, I hope you'll forgive me for this brief lapse. I had to do it because my irony meter is building up to a meltdown and explosion because of what Dr. Michael Egnor…
oracknows | April 9, 2007I tell ya, ever since I first posted my infamous You Might Be an Altie If..., it seems that everyone wants in on the action. Not that I mind much. I can't honestly take credit for the idea; so it would be silly of me to get upset if someone else uses it.
This time around, it's fellow skeptic Skeptico. As I do, he really detests the ridiculous woo that is The Secret. I don't necessarily like the term that he has come up with for aficionados of The Secret and the truly idiotic and woo-filled Law of Attraction (Secretards). After all, the term "altie," although meant a bit sarcastically, is not…
oracknows | April 6, 2007Time flies once again, and, seemingly so soon after the last successful Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle, the next one is fast approaching. This time around, it's going to be hosted at Geek Counterpoint. So get your entries to Lorne by Wednesday, and then join us for yet another entertaining edition of every skeptic's favorite blog carnival. At least I hope it's every skeptic's favorite blog carnival; if it's not, believe me, we're working on it.
As is my wont, I'm also pointing out that we're always looking for hosts. If you've hosted before and think you might want ot host again or if you'…
oracknows | April 6, 2007This one didn't seem big enough to deserve the full Your Friday Dose of Woo treatment, but I certainly don't want to let this additional bit of religious woo go by unnoticed:
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA - March 27, 2007. Regardless of creed, ethnicity, age or culture, throughout history people have steadfastly believed in the power of prayer. Now a team of scientists and over a million people around the world will put this belief to the test. From May 15th through May 29th the "Breakthrough Celebration: Compassion to Action" will be the largest interfaith global meditation and prayer for peace…
oracknows | April 4, 2007Well, well, well, well.
I hadn't expected it. I really hadn't. After just shy of three weeks since I first made my challenge to Dr. Egnor to put up or shut up regarding certain claims of his that the "design inference" has been "of great value" in medicine and results in "the best medical research," I had pretty much given up trying to get an answer out of him. I had come to assume that either (1) Dr. Egnor had been either unaware of my challenge (although I tended to doubt it, given how many echoed it, or (2) he was simply ignoring it in favor of posting some amazingly bad reasoning. To…
oracknows | April 3, 2007One of the consistent themes of this blog has been combating Holocaust denial and, as a subtext, another consistent theme has been that passing laws to criminalize Holocaust denial (or, as has been attempted recently, criminalize "genocide denial") or throwing Holocaust deniers like David Irving into jail is about as ill-advised an approach to fighting this particularly odious form of racism and anti-Semitism as I can imagine. It makes Holocaust denial the "forbidden fruit" and at the same time facilitates the truly disgusting spectacle of Holocaust deniers donning the mantle of free speech…
oracknows | April 2, 2007Now that it's been admitted that the apparent Discovery Institute prank, in which Dr. Michael Egnor posed as a parody of the most ignorant creationists there are, spouting truly inane and long-debunked canards about evolution for a month and a half, all in an effort to snooker us evil Darwinists into attacking him and then gloat as he revealed to the world that it was all just a joke, has been revealed to be in reality a Panda's Thumb April Fool's Day prank, I have to admit that it's depressing to have to contemplate again the fact that Dr. Egnor actually believes all the pseudoscientific and…
oracknows | April 1, 2007This Panda's Thumb entry makes me wonder if I was wasting my time with all those rebuttals of Dr. Michael Egnor's astoundingly ignorant attacks on "Darwinism." Could it be that Dr. Egnor really was just pulling our legs all along?
I have to admit that it seems plausible. After all, how could a man like Dr. Egnor make it through an undergraduate biochemistry degree program, then medical school, then the often brutal and--dare I say it?--Darwinian culling process of a neurosurgery residency program, only to go on to become a respected Professor of Neurosurgery at SUNY Stony Brook, and, with all…