Skepticism/Critical Thinking
oracknows | June 11, 2006A couple of days ago, I wrote about a megafestival of altie woo taking place in my favorite city. It just occurred to me right now: If I were in Chicago right at this very minute, I could be in Hulda Clark's workshop (which is starting right now) learning how to cure all cancers and cure all diseases by zapping people's parasites and telling them to get their amalgam fillings and any teeth with root canals removed.
I'm missing a chance right now to learn a new skill that would let me become the ultimate doctor! Why on earth am I still here on the East Coast?
Well, I guess there's always…
oracknows | June 7, 2006I really have to turn off my Google Alerts for this topic. I'm going to pull out my hair if I don't.
As you may recall, I've been posting about two young victims of the siren call of quackery who will most likely pay with their lives for their trust in quacks. The first, Katie Wernecke, rejected conventional medicine in Texas several months ago and is now at an undisclosed location receiving "secret" treatments, her father claiming that he can't reveal what treatment she is receiving or the doctors will stop treating her. The second, Abraham Cherrix, has gotten permission to leave Virginia to…
oracknows | June 6, 2006I'm probably going to regret posting this article, as I normally don't venture much into these areas. Chalk it up to its being 6/6/06 and say that the Devil made me do it, but I plan on diving in. Besides, I feel the need for a brief change of pace.
Regular readers of this blog know my low opinion of RFK Jr. It began nearly a year ago when he published a deceptive conspiracy-mongering article about the alleged link between thimerosal and autism in Rolling Stone and Salon.com last year, in which he completely misrepresented a conference held about vaccines as a massive conspiratorial coverup…
oracknows | June 5, 2006Via The Onion (where else):
TALLAHASSEE, FL--Only months after abandoning a tenured position at Lehigh University, maverick chemist Theodore Hapner managed to disprove two of the three laws of thermodynamics and show that gold is a noxious gas, turning the world of science--defined for centuries by exhaustive research, painstaking observation, and hard-won theories--completely on its head.
The brash chemist, who conducts independent research from his houseboat, has infuriated peers by refusing to "play by the rules of Socrates, Bacon, and Galileo," calling test results as he sees them,…
oracknows | June 5, 2006Perhaps you've seen it. Certainly if you've seen the "arguments" of Holocaust deniers, you've seen it. The desperate attempt to find one piece of testimony, data, or evidence that does not support conventional science or history. For example, a Holocaust denier will zero in on an eyewitness account of either a death camp or a Nazi atrocity that doesn't quite add up. Alternatively, he will make much of the discovery of a false "Holocaust survivor," as if finding out that someone lying about having survived the Holocaust somehow invalidates its historicity.
For example:
For half a century now…
oracknows | June 1, 2006All you need is this.
Yes, it's the Jesus Pan.
Who needs to wait for miracles to produce things like the Jesus grilled cheese sandwich? Now you can make them yourself!
Prediction:
Coming soon....The Virgin Mary Pan!
Maybe you can think of other great products along these lines? Lenin, anyone?
oracknows | May 25, 2006It's been an interesting week for this week's host of the Skeptics' Circle, Skeptico. He had a creationist appropriate his name, create a Blogspot blog, and actually post comments on other people's blogs under the name "Skeptico." Not good. Fortunately, no one was fooled, and it was the False Skeptico's posting creationist tripe on other blogs that brought him to the attention of Skeptico himself, then to me, and then to PZ.
Fortunately, for the 35th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle, Skeptico has decided to have a little fun with his doppleganger, and the result is yet another fine edition of…
oracknows | May 22, 2006Yikes.
Grant crunch time or no grant crunch time, I couldn't let this pass.
This week's host of the Skeptics' Circle, Skeptico, has been one of my favorite skeptical bloggers for a long time now. As a measure of how good he is, he now has a doppleganger blog.
Damn, I'm a bit envious. No one's seen fit to try that with me, other than J. B. Handley's rather pitiful attempt at cybersquatting the domain oracknows.com.
On the other hand, it's a creationist using Skeptico's name. Besides, spouting bogus "critiques" of Darwin (just how tiresome, bogus, and unoriginal, Bronze Dog shows here) this…
oracknows | May 22, 2006Geez, who could have seen this one coming?
Straight from the Discovery Institute's blog regarding atheist and Holocaust denier Larry Darby in reference to his activities against ID in Alabama, Casey Luskin bloviates:
An outspoken opponent of the bill has been activist Larry Darby. Mr. Darby's vehement opposition to the Alabama Academic Freedom Bill was on full display at a House Education hearing back on April 29, 2004. According to reports I have received, committee chair, Rep. Yvonne Kennedy (D), did not allow citizens to testify for the bill. But for some reason she let Mr. Darby alone…
oracknows | May 18, 2006Enough, already!
Over the last couple of days, we've had Signs You Might Be an Intelligent Design Critic.
Next, we had You May Be an Intelligent Design Supporter If...
Just remember who got the ball rolling with these silly Jeff Foxworthy-inspired lists way back in January 2005 and updated it shortly after landing here at ScienceBlogs.
Alright, I'm a little envious. I wish I had thought of this list. I guess, though, I'll console myself with the fact that I do have one "You might be an X if..." sort of list to my credit.
And, I have to confess, I found a couple of these amusing, such as, "…
oracknows | May 16, 2006NOTE (7/27/2016): People have been telling me, based on this post written over ten years ago, how Donald Trump sounds just like Vox Day. It's true. He does. It's also true that the thought of exporting 11-12 million people in 4-8 years is just as ridiculous now as it was ten years ago. I weep that so many in the Republican Party not only take this nonsense seriously but voted for Donald Trump based on a promise very much like what Vox Day described, so many that Donald Trump is now the Republican Party nominee for President. So I added this note. I also note that some of the links are dead…
oracknows | May 12, 2006Tara's post yesterday about Mercury and Mythology about how mercury in vaccines does not cause autism and about a recent story demonstrating tht mercury as used in dental amalgams is safe, coupled with Phil Plait's discussion of an article in TIME about autism that seemed a bit too credulous about facilitated communication reminded me that I haven't blogged about autism in a while. Basically, not much has happened that I feel qualified to comment on since Paul Shattuck's article concluding that claims of an "autism epidemic" based on analyses of the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (…
oracknows | May 4, 2006Damn you, PZ!
I know I spent three whole posts discussing the problem of credulity towards creationism among physicians. I spent a lot of time in those posts explaining potential reasons why physicians might be susceptible to the blandishments of creationists and even used the example of a medical student who is a proud young earth creationist as an example of the perils to medicine of not taking a stand regarding this sort of pseudoscience.
Leave it to PZ to one-up me.
Sadly, PZ has found an example of a physician who makes Alice (our blogging young earth creationist medical student) look…
oracknows | May 3, 2006Last week, I wrote a rather lengthy (or, as my detractors would probably call it, "long-winded") post about the concept of a medical wikipedia. As you may recall, I expressed considerable skepticism about whether the wikipedia concept could work as well as its boosters claim it could. Even though others have clarified what a medical wikipedia could and could not do, I still can't help but worry that activists and alties would hijack the wiki for their own purposes.
Now I've found an actual example to consider, although it's not quite what I warned about.
It turns out that there is an AIDS…
oracknows | May 2, 2006I love a good fisking, and James over at Autism Street has administered a real blog slapdown to a really idiotic article defending "natural medicine." He rightly points out the jaw-droppingly obvious straw men and appeals to other ways of knowing that Mike Adams uses in the article.
But don't take just my word for it about how good the fisking is. The Amazing Randi himself (or a very convincing doppelganger) dropped by in the comments to lend tactical air support.
oracknows | March 31, 2006The 2005 Pigasus Awards have been announced by The Amazing Randi himself. The categories:
Category #1, to the scientist who said or did the silliest thing related to the supernatural, paranormal or occult.
Category #2, to the funding organization that supported the most useless study of a supernatural, paranormal or occult claim.
Category #3, to the media outlet that reported as factual the most outrageous supernatural, paranormal or occult claims.
Category #4, to the "psychic" performer who fooled the greatest number of people with the least talent:.
Category #5, for the most persistent…
oracknows | March 24, 2006Here's more proof that there's "one born every minute" and that "nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public" (yes, I know I'm mixing quote sources):
A man named Monte Bowman is selling a product called Photoblocker that is designed to be sprayed on auto license plates in order to confound cameras at intersections designed to photograph the license plates of cars running red lights. Given that these devices have proliferated like weeds across the U.S. over the last few years, allowing towns to supplement their income in addition to the usual speed traps, you…
oracknows | March 22, 2006Just yesterday, I commented about an article that analyzed President Bush's penchant for using rather artless straw man fallacies when answering his critics. By an almost amazing coincidence, that very day he was busily engaged in doing more of the same in a press conference. For example, when asked about the terrorist surveillance program in which he used not one but two straw men argument in the same response:
I did notice that nobody from the Democrat Party has actually stood up and called for getting rid of the terrorist surveillance program. You know, if that's what they believe, if…
oracknows | March 21, 2006Now here's something you don't see every day: a news analysis article pointing out a politician's love of a logical fallacy:
WASHINGTON - "Some look at the challenges in Iraq and conclude that the war is lost and not worth another dime or another day," President Bush said recently.
Another time he said, "Some say that if you're Muslim you can't be free."
"There are some really decent people," the president said earlier this year, "who believe that the federal government ought to be the decider of health care ... for all people."
Of course, hardly anyone in mainstream political debate has made…
oracknows | March 10, 2006It's good to see the Pooflinger back in action. It really is. I don't even mind that he's starting to muscle in on my territory, because, as he points out, alties need poo-love too. In the process He's unearthed a "gem" of altie wackiness that even I had never encountered before.
Better still, he's returned to deconstructing that tome of creationist nuttiness, The Evolution Cruncher.