Skepticism/Critical Thinking
oracknows | March 13, 2007Apparently, our President brings "bad energy" wherever he goes, requiring some strong woo to cleanse the area after he leaves:
Maya leaders are to perform a special cleaning ceremony at ancient ruins to clear bad energy after a visit by President Bush.
Mr Bush is due at the Mayan ruins of Iximche in Guatemala as part of his tour of the Latin American region, reports the BBC.
But after he leaves, Maya protesters said they would hold a ceremony to restore peace and harmony to the area.
Morales Toj said: "We will burn incense, place flowers and water in the area where Mr Bush has walked to clean…
oracknows | March 12, 2007It figures.
After my having written repeated debunkings of various physicians who are creationists (mostly of the "intelligent design" variety), in retrospect I should have seen this one coming. I should have seen that the Discovery Institute, eager to use anyone they can find whom they can represent to the public as having scientific credentials (never mind whether those credentials have anything to do with evolutionary biology) and thus dupe the public into seeing them as having authority when they start laying down ignorant brain farts about how they "doubt Darwinism," would settle on…
oracknows | March 10, 2007Well, not exactly "no comment." You know that Orac, being the annoyingly obnoxious skeptic that he is, has to put at least two cents in.
This one's just plain odd. I knew Rosie O'Donnell's not exactly the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree, and she also borders on being a creduloid, at least with respect to almost buying the myth that mercury in vaccines causes autism (although she does get props for slapping down David Kirby) and waxing antivax about Gardasil, the new vaccine against human papilloma virus. But last week, she revealed that she has been using "inversion therapy" for years to…
oracknows | March 8, 2007...That all around evolution-ignorant but nonetheless eager lapdog of the Discovery Institute, SUNY Stonybrook Professor of Neurosurgery Dr. Michael Egnor, is back.
Rats. I thought that the utter drubbing he took at the hands of myself and my fellow ScienceBloggers (in particular PZ Myers) might have given him the message that he needs to lay low for a while. Apparently not. I guess he must have the monumental ego that more than a few neurosurgeons are famous for. (After all, it takes supreme confidence in one's own abilities to be able to cut into the human brain and believe that the patient…
oracknows | March 7, 2007...even ten years after his death.
I kind of like the reaction in this photo. It cracks me up. Maybe I should find a permanent home for it somewhere on the blog.
(Don't ask me how I became aware of this one.)
oracknows | March 2, 2007I didn't get back home until late last night; unfortunately there was no time to do a segment of Your Friday Dose of Woo that was up to my standards. Fortunately, there's something that I've been holding in reserve for just such an occasion that fits right in. Long-timers may remember that, near the very beginning of my blog, I did a post entitled What is an altie? It was basically a Jeff Foxworthy-like listing of "You just might be an altie if..." statements that, I think, had a good point. For those of you not familiar with the term "altie," it was coined about three or four years ago on…
oracknows | March 1, 2007I apologize for submitting you to the previous three creationist videos. I realize that they were pretty mind-numbing, and then there was that cheesy Christian rock ballad.
So here's one antidote. (Warning: The video is nearly two hours long; even I haven't had time to watch the whole thing yet.) And it happened at one of my old alma maters, Case Western Reserve University.
it's good for what ails you. Watch it a little at a time if it's too long to watch all at once.
oracknows | March 1, 2007Here's the finale of my audience participation project for today. I've saved the "best" for last. This short video, called Science Refutes Its Own Laws?, is the target. Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to answer the questions contained therein and/or demonstrate why they represent typical creationist canards, and do it without reference to Talkorigins.org. It's pretty easy, but it's also depressing that this crap persists. Also, don't be too depressed. There's one more of these coming, but it's an antidote.
It's also amusing how confident the tone of the video is. Forgive me…
oracknows | March 1, 2007Here's part 2 of my audience participation exercise. This is a continuation of my audience participation/open thread set of posts for today. It's called "list the creationist fallacies." This post is part 2 of this endeavor. This short video, called Which came first, the DNA or the protein?, is the target. Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to answer the questions contained therein and/or demonstrate why they represent nothing more than the typical creationist canard. It's pretty easy, but it's also depressing that this crap persists. If that's not entertaining enough, feel free…
oracknows | March 1, 2007Busy, busy, busy last night and all day today until late, namely because I'm out of town on business. My schedule has been packed, and I won't be home until late. There's no time to post one of my characteristic pearls of verbosity. So what do I do when this happens?
Be grateful that YouTube exists, that's what. With a little planning ahead and a few minutes' work, I can make sure that the Respectful Insolence you all know and love keeps flowing while I'm away, only this time with some help. This time around, I'm going to do a couple of audience participation/open thread kind of posts. It's…
oracknows | February 28, 2007Another one has fallen.
Yes, another prestigious medical school has given in. First I lamented the decline in basic science education in medical schools. Then, I lamented even more the infiltration of woo into the curricula of far too many medical schools, spurred on by patient demand, a desire for a nice, high profit cash-on-the-barrelhead set of treatments, and, most depressing of all, the misguided and highly credulous advocacy of the American Medical Student Association (AMSA). Worse, my own alma mater, the University of Michigan, has infiltrated serious woo into its curriculum. But at…
oracknows | February 26, 2007I'm getting really, really tired of this.
You've all read my rants at the propensity of surgeons who clearly don't have clue one about evolutionary theory spouting off ignorantly about the alleged shortcomings of evolution as a theory while either explicitly or implicitly promoting the pseudoscience of "intelligent design" creationism. I don't think I have to expound much on just how much this phenomenon irritates me other than to repeat my desire to find a more permanent solution to the question of hiding my face in shame over the antics of my fellow surgeons on this. Perhaps it truly is…
oracknows | February 23, 2007This week's been a lot of doom and gloom here on the ol' blog, hasn't it? I don't know how it happened, but somehow I let blogging about dichloroacetate, the inexpensive small molecule drug that has been widely touted as a "cure for cancer" that "big pharma" (or the FDA, or both, take your pick) is keeping from cancer patients because it's supposedly unpatentable and unprofitable, take over the blog for three whole days. Believe it or not, I really hadn't meant for that to happen. It just sort of took over. Of course, big time Pharma Shill that I supposedly am (with the badge to prove it), no…
oracknows | February 22, 2007I realize that this blog has become "all dichloroacetate (DCA) all the time." I think I've said what needs to be said in my usual long-winded fashion, and now it's time to move on to less heavy topics for a while. Tomorrow, we will have another installment of Your Friday Dose of Woo. For a warmup, however, here's a tasty little tidbit. Apparently, the Los Angeles Zoo has paid $4,500 to a feng shui expert to help them design the enclosure for golden monkeys from China:
LOS ANGELES Feb 13, 2007 (AP)-- The Los Angeles Zoo paid $4,500 to an expert in the ancient Chinese art of feng shui to ensure…
oracknows | February 19, 2007You know, I'm really tired of this.
I'm tired of my fellow physicians with a penchant for spouting scientifically ignorant "attacks" on or "doubts" about evolution. It embarrasses the hell out of me around ScienceBlogs, and I really wish they would stop it. Sadly, it seems to be an increasingly long list. Although I first noticed it when former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (who is a cardiac surgeon) voiced support for "intelligent design" back in 2005, this tendency among my fellow physicians to pontificate on their distaste for evolution didn't start to irritate me really seriously…
oracknows | February 16, 2007Like most people, I like making money. True, it's not the main goal of my life (otherwise I definitely wouldn't be in academics), but, all in all, it's better to be comfortably off than to be poor. And, as I've said before, although I could make more in private practice, I don't do too badly as an academic surgeon. I can afford a decent house, a nice car, computers, and gadgets, and still save for retirement. Of course, key to that is not spending beyond my means, as some at my income level somehow still manage to do, but wouldn't it be nice if you could access forces and powers that would--…
oracknows | February 15, 2007It's that time again, when the part of the blogosphere that celebrates critical thinking over the usual credulousness that allows dubious stories to spread far and wide meets to examine those stories and claims with a hard-nosed skepticism. And few skeptics, it would seem, are as tough as the narrator of this edition of the Skeptics' Circle, who's now telling his tale over at Action Skeptics (where, I guess, they're trying to take the name of the blog literally):
I've been on my own since the Department cut me loose over the Pendelton incident, when I decked that con-artist "psychic" the…
oracknows | February 10, 2007...that Kristjan Wager started a blog.
Kristjan, as some may know, is a frequent commenter here, and has even guest-blogged for me about the Danish studies on two occasions.
Head on over and check out Kristjan's blog, Pro-Science. I'll be adding it to my sidebar the next time I get a chance to revamp my blogroll.
oracknows | February 7, 2007I happen to be in Phoenix today, attending the Academic Surgical Congress, where I actually have to present one of my abstracts. That means, between flying to Phoenix last night and preparing for my talk, I didn't have time to serve up a heapin' helping of that Respectful Insolence⢠you know and (hopefully) love. Fortunately, there's still a lot of stuff in the vaults of the old blog begging to be moved over to the new blog; so that's what I'll do today. I'll probably be back tomorrow, given that the conference will likely produce blog fodder. (Conferences usually do.) And, don't worry.…
oracknows | February 6, 2007Congratulations to Robert Lancaster, purveyor of the fine website Stop Sylvia Browne, a site dedicated to documenting the misadventures and misdeeds of the phony "psychic" known as Sylvia Browne. Apparently she has noticed him. In fact, between Robert, The Amazing Randi, and Anderson Cooper piling on to document her errors and downright callousness towards the people for whom she claims to exercise her "psychic gift," she's clearly feeling the heat. Her screw-up over Shawn Hornbeck, where she told his parents that he was dead only to have Shawn discovered alive recently and her telling the…