Skepticism/Critical Thinking
oracknows | July 23, 2006Eh Nonymous has posted a first hand account of a speech by Judge John E. Jones III, who decided the Kitzmiller v. Dover case on "intelligent design" creationism in Dover. We need more judges like him. My only thought is: How on earth did this guy get appointed to the federal bench by the Bush Administration? He's way too reasonable and unwilling to let religion influence his decision-making process.
I'm sure it's a mistake the Bush Administration won't make again.
oracknows | July 22, 2006I tell you, I take a night off from blogging, not even glancing at the blog or my e-mail, instead falling into a deep slumber at 10 PM after The Dog Whisperer on TV, thanks to a somewhat stressful week and a large meal plus a beer, and what happens?
Abraham' Cherrix's uncle comments on the old blog and the legal decision regarding whether Abraham has to undergo chemotherapy is issued, three days later than originally anticipated, that's what! In this case, the judge decided that Abraham must report on Tuesday to undergo conventional therapy. Fortunately, I realize (most of the time, anyway)…
oracknows | July 21, 2006Alright, I admit it.
I went a little overboard with last week's edition of Your Friday Dose of Woo. This feature was intended to be a light-hearted look at whatever particular woo target that catches my fancy on a given week, as opposed to the more serious discussions of alternative medicine I like to do at other times. However, it's a fine line between believing in a bit of strange altie woo and possibly being a disturbed individual, and I fear that last week's targets (the guy who wanted to sell the secrets of Jesus on Ebay and Alex Chiu, who claims to have figured out how humans can be…
oracknows | July 19, 2006Zoinks! Why didn't anyone think of this before?
This week's Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle starts out in the Mystery Machine, courtesy of Big Heathen Mike at Mike's Weekly Skeptic Rant:
We join the gang as everyone got ready for a weekend adventure...
Everyone piled into the stretch Mystery Machine and headed off on our road trip to Franken Castle. It looked to be a great meeting this week and the change of location from "the 'net", most agreed, was a good idea.
And it was.
Next up to host is Daylight Atheism. Start getting your best skeptical material ready to submit to the Circle, and…
oracknows | July 19, 2006The latest Tangled Bank has been posted at a fellow skeptic's blog, Salto Sobrius, who, it just so happens, is also scheduled to host the Skeptics' Circle in September. Go catch up on the best science blogging of the last two weeks.
Speaking of the Skeptics' Circle, you still have a few hours left to get your entries to Mike. Then join him tomorrow. Nothing like a little extra dose of critical thinking and science for your week.
oracknows | July 18, 2006If Your Friday Dose of Woo from me isn't enough woo for you, now Medgadget has inaugurated a new feature it calls Pseudoscience Friday (its first target: bioresonance testing). Between the two blogs, plus the Amazing Randi, that ought to be all the woo any skeptic could want to see debunked every Friday!
In the meantime, since I mentioned it so late, it can serve as a little appetizer before the skeptical feast that Mike's Weekly Skeptic Rant is poised to deliver on Thursday when he hosts the Skeptics' Circle.
The guys at Medgaget did have a good idea. They're taking requests, and, now,…
oracknows | July 14, 2006As hard as it is to believe, we're up to the third week of Your Friday Dose of Woo. And, at week 3, I'm still having the same problem: too many targets of woo, so many so that they overwhelmed my tired brain not unlike Lionel Milgrom's quantum homeopathy becoming quantumly entangled with my neurons. (Never mind that quantum entanglement and other quantum effects cease to be a major factor for anything bigger than the atomic scale.) I thought of revisiting Milgrom's most excellent woo, but, because I've been on call, I just haven't had the time (or the will) to plow through his paper.…
oracknows | July 10, 2006Ever wonder how certain fundamentalists can believe without question every word in an ancient text as being absolutely literal, even to the point of accepting a myth of a seven day creation over all the scientific evidence that has accumulated over the decades that the earth is really billions of years old and that all life has evolved?
Matt (a.k.a. The Pooflinger) has discovered the answer: a new protein known as Credulin!
oracknows | July 9, 2006He had been away a while. In fact, he had been away so long (since early May) that I was starting to wonder if he had given up blogging, which would have been a blow, given that he's one of my favorite skeptical bloggers.
Fortunately, my fears were premature, and he's back, with part 2 of his Seven Most Common Thinking Errors of Highly Amusing Quacks and Pseudoscientists.
oracknows | July 7, 2006When I originally conceived of doing a weekly feature entitled "Your Friday Dose of Woo," I did it almost on a whim. Now that I've reached the second week, I've realized that this is going to be harder than I thought. No, it's not that it's hard to find suitable targets. Quite the opposite, in fact. There's just too much woo out there, that it's really hard to choose a suitable subject. I had a hellacious time trying to pick one particular instance of woo that tickled my fancy enough to dedicate a blog post to it.
Of course, I did think about doing a followup to last week's Friday Dose of Woo…
oracknows | July 6, 2006It's that time again, time for the 38th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle.
Thirsty?
Well, LBBP over at Skeptic Rant offers parched skeptics a fine assortment of beverages including Satire Cider, Quack Quencher, Woo Brew, and Creationist Tonic, among others. It's just the cool, refreshing dose of critical thinking to quench that skeptical thirst that's been intensified by the rampant credulity of society in general and the blogosphere in particular.
Drink deep!
And come on back for the 39th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle, which will be hosted by Mike over at (appropriately enough) Mike's Weekly…
oracknows | June 30, 2006While thinking about ways to make the blog better, I wondered if I should emulate some of my colleagues, many of whom have regular features every week, often on Friday. And, since I usually get a little less serious on Fridays anyway (and, because traffic seems to fall off 50% or more anyway regardless of what I post, on the weekends, too), it seemed like a good idea. But I couldn't think of something that ties together the common themes of this blog, yet maintains a suitably Friday-blogging light-hearted feel to it. And then I came across this article:
L. R. Milgrom (2006). Towards a New…
oracknows | June 28, 2006Damn you, Kathleen.
Every time I think that I can give the whole mercury/autism thing a rest for a while and move on to less infuriating pastures, you keep finding things that keep dragging me back to the pit of pseudoscience inhabited by Dr. Mark Geier and his son David. The first time around, Kathleen found the Geiers misrepresenting David Geier's credentials on published journal articles to make it appear that David Geier had done the work reported in the articles at George Washington University when in fact he had not. I found David Geier's appropriation of the name of George Washington…
oracknows | June 27, 2006One year ago yesterday, a turd flew, the first of many to come.
A new skeptic had arrived in the blogosphere, and he called himself (appropriately enough, given his propensity for lobbing fecalgrams at the credulous) The Pooflinger.
I feel real bad that I missed his blogiversary because of something as insignificant as being on an NIH study section. Well, no, I don't actually feel that bad, because being on my first study section is a major step in my career. But, now that I'm back, I have to send Matt (a.k.a. The Pooflinger) some belated blogiversary wishes.
As you may know, Matt quickly…
oracknows | June 27, 2006Busy at NIH Study section today, I didn't have time to compose anything extensive. (And there is most definitely something that needs a little Respectful Insolence going on; unfortunately, it will have to wait until tomorrow to receive it.) Fortunately, I had some thing in reserver for just such an occasion. From my e-mail several weeks ago (name & location withheld):
Dr. Orac,
My name is D. I am a Chiropractor and a Medical Doctor (IM resident at Medical Center X). I knew something wasn't right about the whole Chiropractic thing about half way through my education but could never quite…
oracknows | June 22, 2006Mysteriously appearing prematurely briefly last week deep in the heart of the Bermuda Triangle, only to disappear again in an equally mysterious manner, the 37th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle has once again appeared, but this time as expected at the home of Autism Diva. However, the participants are a bit unusual this time, in that they're the denizens of the deep, holding the first underwater meeting ever. Check it out!
Two weeks from now, the Skeptics' Circle will appear once again, this time at Skeptic Rant, where it was hosted once before in a most creative fashion. I'm looking for more…
oracknows | June 21, 2006It's been a very interesting week for those of us who try to keep an eye on antivaccination warriors who scare mothers with claims based on either no science or bad science of dire consequences that will come from vaccinating their children.
A very interesting week indeed, kind of like that old curse, "May you live in interesting times."
Last week, eight years after his study that set off scare whose repercussions continue even now, Andrew Wakefield was finally called to account for professional misconduct for unreported conflicts of interest and highly unethical and unprofessional behavior.…
oracknows | June 20, 2006Australian skeptic Peter Bowditch was challenged by a homeopath to take some homeopathic 200C belladonna tablets. Ever the intrepid skeptic and critical thinker, Peter has now answered the challenge in front of 100 people and reported his experience, beginning with a description of what he should have experienced:
A Modern Herbal by Mrs Maud Grieve, where it says that I should have been experiencing ""Strange indescribable feelings with giddiness, yawning, staggering or falling on attempting to walk; dryness of mouth and throat, sense as of suffocation, swallowing difficult, voice husky; face…
oracknows | June 16, 2006In Petaluma, California (the Bay area), as reported by ABC 7:
June 14 - KGO - More former clients of a North Bay chiropractor are coming forward, echoing what we reported a month-and-a-half ago -- that Daniel Marsh is making money off some bizarre treatments.
State investigators are looking into Dr. Marsh, his treatments and his billing practices. They're checking out information uncovered by the I-Team. And now we've received new complaints about the Petaluma chiropractor.
Marianne Whitfield went to Petaluma chiropractor Daniel Marsh for her severe heartburn, or acid reflux. He had an…
oracknows | June 12, 2006Regular readers of this blog may have noticed that it's been a while since I've written a substantive post on the fear mongering and bad science that are used by activists to support the claim that mercury in the thimerosal used as preservatives in vaccines is the cause of an "autism epidemic." The closest I've come is using Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s credulous reporting and conspiracy-mongering, in which he uncritically parroted the claims of the worst of the mercury militia and arguing that his recent article in Rolling Stone uses the same sort of dubious and fallacious techniques, showing…