Skepticism/Critical Thinking
oracknows | February 5, 2007Amazing!
I had thought that one of my favorite skeptical blogs, Photon in the Darkness, had gone the way of the Dodo. With no posts since last July, I thought Prometheus had given up blogging for good, never to be seen again. Hoping against hope that he'd reappear, I left his RSS feed in NetNewsWire, even as the months ticked by and the application labeled it a "dinosaur," signifying that it hadn't been updated in 60 days.
Amazingly, yesterday, I noticed a new entry. So please, let me be among the first to welcome Prometheus back to the blogosphere. Head on over and say "hi" for me, will ya?
oracknows | February 5, 2007Pity poor David Kirby.
After all, he made his name by hitching his star to a losing hypothesis, namely that the mercury in thimerosal in vaccines causes autism. He wrote a book about it, Evidence of Harm, back in 2005 and has milked that sucker dry ever since. Most recently, his appearances culminated in a "debate" last month with Arthur Allen, whose book Vaccine: The Controversial Story of Medicine's Greatest Lifesaver just garnered a very favorable review in the New York Times, during which he did a most amusing dance around the issue by pointing to "other sources" of environmental mercury…
oracknows | February 2, 2007I know, I know, I said last time that I probably wouldn't post on dichloroacetate and the hype some of the more credulous parts of the blogosphere are falling for over its being supposedly a "cancer cure" that big pharma is either willfully ignoring or actively suppressing. However, when DaveScot and the sycophants on Uncommon Descent join in with the "cure for cancer" hype and conspiracy-mongering (with apparently only one voice of reason trying to counter DaveScot's cluelessness), it's really, really hard for me to resist the urge to introduce the mutual admiration society over at UD to a…
oracknows | February 2, 2007Skeptico announces it's his second blogiversary! Skeptico is one of the premier skeptical blogs out there, and, although he isn't posting as much as he used to, can still be counted on to provide some of the best takesdowns of woo there are.
Go on over and say hi and read his retrospective of the most notable unskeptical characters he's written about over the past year.
oracknows | February 2, 2007
You know, I really wish I could have made it to The Amazing Meeting this year. It would have been really cool to have a chance to hear in person such skeptical luminaries, such as The Amazing Randi, Penn and Teller (although I do concede that Penn's Libertarianism does occasionally border on credulity for some dubious propositions), and Phil Plait. And who wouldn't want to meet the purveyors of what's become my favorite skeptical podcast, The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe, such as Steve Novella and The Skepchick? And, of course, it's been a long time since I've had the opportunity to visit…
oracknows | February 1, 2007The 53rd Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle has been posted at Slicing with Occam's Razor. Once again, the best skeptical blogging from the last fortnight has been gathered, sifted, and presented in one tight, easy to peruse package.
Next up is Action Skeptics, who will host a fortnight hence, on February 15, 2007. If you're interested in adding your name to the increasingly long and distinguished list of bloggers who have hosted in the past, please drop me a line at oracknows@gmail.com. The schedule is here, and what's involved in hosting is described here.
oracknows | February 1, 2007It's things like this over at Over My Med Body! that show our friend Graham really knows how to make a humble guy like Orac feel the love:
Big name bloggers like Orac and Dr. RW and KevinMD are all up in arms about how "medical schools are going the wrong way" and asking "Does anyone in academic medicine care about the integrity of medical education?" They like to talk about the fluffy "woo" of medical school, as if we're all hippies out in our commune who have sacrilegiously sacrificed our Evidence and Data to a golden cow.
Give. Me. A. Break.
They're whining as if this is the most…
oracknows | January 31, 2007There I was, puttering around the Internet trying to procrastinate while writing yet another grant, when I came across a truly inane article by Scott Adams arguing that the entire universe must be intelligent because processes that lead to products of intelligent (machines, books, etc., made by us) must also be intelligent. (At least I think that's what he was arguing; the argument was so poorly constructed and circular that it was hard to tell. No doubt Adams will retreat to his "I was only joking" or "I was only playing with your mind" defense.) I thought of having a little fun with it, but…
oracknows | January 29, 2007Here's just another friendly reminder that the latest edition of the Skeptics' Circle, that now-venerable blog carnival dedicated to critical thinking and skepticism, is due to appear this week on Thursday, February 1 at Slicing with Occam's Razor. (Hmmm, that's mighty close to Groundhog's Day.)
So, if you're a blogger and have written something that would do The Amazing Randi proud, send it to Occam's Edge at OkcamsEdge@gmail.com. And, as always, if you're interested in trying your hand at hosting, drop me a line at oracknows@gmail.com.
oracknows | January 29, 2007Critics who don't like my insistence on applying the scientific method to the claims of alternative medicine sometimes accuse me of unrelenting hostility towards alternative medicine, as though no amount of evidence would ever convince me of the efficacy of various alternative medicine therapies. Nothing could be further from the truth; I merely insist, as I have from the very beginning, that, at the very least, the claims of alternative medicine should be subject to the same testing by the scientific method that "conventional" or "scientific" medical treatments (a.k.a. evidence-based…
oracknows | January 26, 2007
After posting about the Donnie Davies, an alleged "youth minister" in Houston who has garnered a lot of attention throughout the blogosphere for his website in which he provides a hilariously off-base list of "gay bands" to avoid and "safe" bands, I was perusing my Folder of Woo, looking for this week's target, but it was hard. After all, whether Donnie is a big hoax or not, whether his atrocious video saying that "homosexuality is a choice" and that "God hates a fag" is meant to be satire or not, he was going to be hard to top. In fact, I don't think I'll even try. However, Donnie did…
oracknows | January 24, 2007The other day, I did a reality check on a story making the rounds through the blogosphere about an alleged new cure for cancer that, if you believe some hysterical bloggers, is being suppressed because it would cut into their profits. I took one blogger to task for what I characterized as the "utterly ridiculous title" of his post (Objectively Pro-cancer). Well, he apparently didn't like that and showed up in my comments claiming that he was joking.
It sure didn't sound like a joke to me, but I thought I'd poll my readers to see if anyone thought I was out of line in my criticism. So, look at…
oracknows | January 24, 2007At the risk of muscling in on Bronze Dog's territory, I've encountered a phenomenon that ought to be in his list of doggerel but doesn't appear to be. It appeared in the comments of my post about the Arthur Allen-David Kirby debate and my discussion of how the human tendency to see patterns where none really exist, coupled with the emotional investment the parents of autistic children have in their children and fueled by unscrupulous purveyors of harmful woo like Mark and David Geier, manages to keep the myth that mercury in vaccines is responsible for the "epidemic" of autism alive. My point…
oracknows | January 23, 2007The commentary on the Arthur Allen-David Kirby debate is coming in fast and furious. The latest is this excellent deconstruction of Kirby's parroting of the claim that autistic children are "poor excretor's" of mercury. I guess I can say that Dad of Cameron took this one on so that I don't have to...
oracknows | January 21, 2007We see far too little of this in the mainstream media:
(Via The Bronze Blog and Memoirs of a Skepchick.)
Anderson Cooper is da man!
oracknows | January 19, 2007I admit it.
I'm a gadget freak. I sometimes think I should have gone into radiology. If you're a radiologist and work with MRI, CT scans, PET scanners, and numerous other cool gadgets. Of course, you also have to sit in dark rooms in the basement of the hospital and stare at films for several years to learn the basics of reading simple radiographs in order to qualify to work with the cool toys, not to that you also have to learn how to do barium enemas and other similarly unpleasant tests. Other times, I think that I should have become a radiation oncologist. Radiation oncology is a great…
oracknows | January 18, 2007Geez, I might as well just put a paper bag over my head right now around my fellow ScienceBloggers.
You've heard me lament before about the woeful ignorance about biology and evolution common among all too many doctors. (You haven't? Well check here, here, here, and here.) Heck, you've even heard me lament about it just a few days ago, my irritation being piqued by a physician by the name of Dr. Geoffrey Simmons.
Now, as if to rub my face in it, Dembski's crew over at Uncommon Design have made me aware of an orthopedic surgeon named David A. Cook, M.D., who's adding to my embarrassment. As…
oracknows | January 13, 2007It's rapidly approaching once again: Our once in a fortnight festival of skepticism, our showcase for reason and critical thinking, our veritable carnival of anti-woo.
Yes, the Skeptics' Circle will be appearing once again on Thursday, January 18. This time around, it will be hosted by someone who has what has to be one of the coolest blog names of all time: Frank the Financially Savvy Atheist (although I'm not sure what, if anything, atheism has to do with being financially savvy). So, if you're a skeptical blogger, fire up your keyboard and get an example of your best skeptical blogging…
oracknows | January 12, 2007The other day, as is my wont every week, I was perusing my Folder of Woo, the folder on my computer in which I keep a bunch of URLs leading to many potential targets for Your Friday Dose of Woo, looking for this week's victim. I had one all picked out, too, but for some reason it just wasn't getting the woo-inator going enough to inspire me to do what is expected every week. Not that it wasn't good woo, even really good woo. It just wasn't great woo, and YFDoW just hasn't been around long enough for me to settle for anything less than the greatest, finest, tastiest woo just yet. Or maybe it…
oracknows | January 11, 2007Since I started this blog, I've become aware of all sorts of weirdness and woo. One special category of woo that irritates me is psychics, particularly the ones who claim that they can contact the dead, like Sylvia Browne or John Edward. They are arguably the worst kind of "psychic," usually using cold reading or some variation of it to take advantage on the hopes of people desperately missing their loved ones who died. Sometimes, however, I learn of a self-styled "psychic" who's so off the wall that my revulsion wrestles with my bemusement, and it's not clear which will win. This is one such…