Skepticism/Critical Thinking
oracknows | March 30, 2007While looking for a birthday card for a relative a while back, I found this card and was intrigued enough to buy it, even though it wasn't appropriate for the person for whom I was seeking a card:
So far, it's just pretty standard Bush-chimp stuff, a staple of comedy ever since W. took office. But what got me was the inside of the card:
Two points:
It's rather amazing that the whole "intelligent design" debate has become so ubiquitous that it's showing up in birthday cards, of all things.
I haven't decided if this is the best birthday card ever or the worst birthday card ever. Opinions?
oracknows | March 30, 2007It is with some trepidation that I approach the latest target of Your Friday Dose of Woo.
No, it's not because the woo is so potent that it has actually struck the fear of You-Know-Who in me (I leave it up to readers to determine whether I was referring to God or Valdemort), although it is indeed potent woo. Nor is it that the woo is boring woo (there's a reason why "power of prayer" kind of woo usually doesn't make it into YFDoW unless there's a really entertaining angle to be targeted). No, it's because this particular woo seems to combine genetics with systems biology (I kid you not),…
oracknows | March 29, 2007Although I'm rather puzzled by the reference to zebras spilling their plastinia, I can't argue that, once again, Martin has come through with another great collection of skeptical blogging as he hosts the 57th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle. Your duty, should you decide to accept it, is to head on over there and check it out. You won't regret it.
Next up is Geek Counterpoint, who will be hosting on Thursday, April 12. If you're a blogger with a skeptical bent, it's time to start thinking about subjects or claims that could use a little critical thinking applied to them. Also, if you think…
oracknows | March 29, 2007Apparently the guys over at Denialism.com have irritated Bill Dembski and his band of merry sycophants over at Uncommon Descent. All I can say is: Uncommon Descent, meet the Galileo Gambit. Oh, you've already met the Galileo Gambit, I see.
That must be the explanation for why you do the Galileo Gambit whine so well...
oracknows | March 29, 2007I was going to try to be a good boy. Really, I was. I had been planning on answering a question about the early detection of tumors. It was an opportune time to do so, given the recent news of cancer recurrence in Elizabeth Edwards and Tony Snow, coupled with a couple of papers I saw just yesterday and the announcement of new screening guidelines for breast MRI. However, I was finding that writing the piece would be fairly complex (because it's a complex topic) and that it might even require a multi-post approach. There was no way to do it justice today; doing it over the weekend would make a…
oracknows | March 27, 2007I've lamented time and time again how woo has been infiltrating American medical schools, even going so far as to find its way into being totally integrated into mandatory curriculum from the very first term of the first year of medical school at Georgetown. I realize I'm a bit late on this one, but sadly it's not just the U.S. where pseudoscience, anti-science, and woo are infiltrating universities. In the U.K., it's starting too:
Over the past decade, several British universities have started offering bachelor of science (BSc) degrees in alternative medicine, including six that offer BSc…
oracknows | March 27, 2007Really, this guy is making that very argument with a straight face!
My brain hurts after seeing such unbelievable stupidity presented as a viable argument by Chuck Missler, the minister who founded the Koinonia House. This makes Dr. Egnor's blather seem intelligent by comparison. It's even more idiotic than the now-infamous video that claimed that the banana disproves atheism and evolution:
(Hat tip to: Stupid Evil Bastard.)
oracknows | March 25, 2007In case you wondered, yes, ScienceBlogs is just a big cabal, and, as evidence, I present the following photo from a week and a half ago, when I managed to meet, drink, and conspire to take over the science blogosphere at the Toledo Lounge in Washington, D.C. with Tara Smith of Aetiology, Evil Monkey of Neurotopia, and Chris Mooney of The Intersection. The locale was appropriate enough, given Tara's and my Toledo connection, and a good time was had by all.
Does Orac normally look like that? Well, remember, around this time, Dr. Egnor was at the height of his foray into making still more…
oracknows | March 24, 2007Time flies, and it flies really fast. Once again, that blog carnival of lucid critical thinking, the Skeptics' Circle, is almost upon us. It's scheduled to appear on Thursday, March 29 at the blog of fellow ScienceBlogger Martin at Aardvarchaelogy. Martin hosted the Circle a while back, before he joined the ScienceBlogs collective, and did a fine job. So, if you're a blogger with an interest in skepticism and critical thinking, send Martin your best work by Wednesday, and then come back here on Thursday to enjoy the fruit of his (and your) labors!
Finally, as always, if you think you have…
oracknows | March 22, 2007I've been remiss about this (mainly because I've been aware of it for a few days now), but it turns out that Mark and Chris Hoofnagle have started a rather promising-looking blog, Denialism.com. It's a blog dedicated to discussing six main areas:
HIV/AIDS Denialism
Global Warming denialism
Creationism/Intelligent Design Denialism
Holocaust Denial
Anti-Vaccination denialists
Animal testing denialists
Hmmm. Looks like they're muscling in on my territory a bit, although I seldom write about global warming for the simple reason that I don't know as much about it as I know about other topics.
Oh,…
oracknows | March 22, 2007I just heard on the radio last night while driving home what has to be one of the worst analogy about global warming that I've ever heard, and, at the risk of annoying fellow SB'ers who frequently write about these topics, like Chris Mooney or Tim Lambert, I felt like commenting.
Oddly enough, the soundbite came from Al Gore, of all people, the last person I would expect to make such a flawed analogy:
The planet has a fever," Gore said. "If your baby has a fever, you go to the doctor. If the doctor says you need to intervene here, you don't say, 'Well, I read a science fiction novel that told…
oracknows | March 21, 2007...like this (explanation here):
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oracknows | March 20, 2007Day four and still no answer to the challenge.
I think I agree with some of my readers who've complained about this; I'll cut back on the frequency of reminders to something less than every day...
oracknows | March 20, 2007The longer I maintain this blog, the more I find unexpected (to me, at least) intersections and relationships between various topics that I write about. Of course, a lot of it simply has to do with the fact that one of the overarching themes of this blog is skepticism and critical thinking, which leads one to seek patterns in various pseudoscience, but sometimes it's a little more interesting than that. For example, a couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post about the "individualization" of treatments in "alternative" medicine and how it's largely a sham that alt-med practitioners claim that their…
oracknows | March 19, 2007Two days ago, I posted a challenge to Dr. Egnor and clarified that challenge yesterday.
Thus far, there has been no answer.
I'm still waiting.
oracknows | March 18, 2007Yesterday, at the end of a post about the fallacious statements about evolution that Dr. Mike Egnor, a Professor of Neurosurgery, has been routinely serving up at the Discovery Institute, I made a challenge. I think I'll repeat it daily for a while until we see if he's up to answering it. It should be a very easy challenge for him to meet, given the number of times that he has made the two assertions that I plan to challenge him about.
Here are the two assertions that Dr. Egnor has made on more than one occasion, but most recently on Friday, and I'll quote him directly:
In fact, most research…
oracknows | March 17, 2007Agh!
I say: Agh! Again.
Remember how it was just a mere three days ago that I administered some Respectful Insolence⢠to Dr. Michael Egnor, the Energizer Bunny of jaw-droppingly, appallingly ignorant anti-evolution posturing based on his apparently nonexistent understanding of what the theory of evolution actually says? Remember how I said how much I sincerely hoped that I could ignore him for a while? I really did mean it at the time.
Really, I did.
And then Afarensis and Mike Dunford had to and let me know that Dr. Egnor's at it yet again.
Dr. Egnor just won't stop, and as a fellow surgeon…
oracknows | March 16, 2007Ah, yes, Washington, DC.
That's where I am right now, deep in the belly of the government beast, attending the meeting of The Society of Surgical Oncology. It's usually a great meeting, except for the distressing tendency of surgeons here to act, well, too much like surgeons. For example, consider when the very first session today, which happened to be about my area of interest breast cancer, started. Was it 8 AM? No. 7 AM? No.
It was 6 AM.
I kid you not. 6 AM in the freakin' morning! The week after the switchover to Daylight Savings Time, yet! There was a time when I used to actually get up…
oracknows | March 15, 2007You may recall Dr. Lorraine Day, the former Chief of Orthopedic Surgery at San Francisco General Hospital in the 1980's who, after developing breast cancer, became a consummate altie, selling various dubious "natural, alternative therapies for all diseases, including cancer and AIDS." Somewhere along the line, sadly, she also became a rabid anti-Semite and Holocaust denier. I've had an interest in her conspiracy-mongering for a while now, because she's the perfect storm of two of my biggest interests: "alternative medicine" and Holocaust denial. I used to refer to her as purveying both…
oracknows | March 14, 2007I need some β-blockers STAT.
I say that not because I'm hypertensive or because I'm having heart palpitations--at least not at the moment. I'm saying it because, after reading the latest brave foray into antievolutionary ignorance by--as much as I hate to admit it--a fellow surgeon named Dr. Michael Egnor, I need to do something for prophylaxis against such problems. Yes, Dr. Egnor is back again, hot on the heels of taking massive and much-deserved abuse from the science blogosphere (including a heapin' helpin' of Respectful Insolence⢠from me) over his spreading of misinformation and…