surgery
oracknows | December 9, 2010I was originally going to switch it up and blog about something other than cancer. In fact, there is a particularly juicy bit of anti-vaccine nonsense that I wanted to write about because it shows the utter mendacity of a certain anti-vaccine website that, believe it or not, is not Age of Autism. I know, I know, it's hard to believe, but there actually is an anti-vaccine group that is giving Generation Rescue a run for its money when it comes to sheer crazy. It'll keep, though, until next week. In the meantime, I have even worse crazy to deal with. In the meantime, I have even more despicable…
Holiday weekend reader mailbag: In which Orac is chastised for "condemning someone who helps people"
oracknows | November 26, 2010The Thanksgiving holiday weekend continues here in the U.S., and, believe it or not, I plan on taking it fairly easy, hanging out with my wife and (hopefully) going to see the new Harry Potter movie later today or tonight. However, even so, I can't resist doing a bit of holiday mailbag fun, first because it's easy, but more importantly because this time around it's instructive. A new reader, who obviously found this blog through a Google search on something or other writes:
Hello Orac, I stumbled across one of your blog pages and I felt compelled to share my story with you.
Seven years ago I…
oracknows | September 6, 2010After chilling out for part of the weekend, yesterday I became so engrossed in writing my part of a training grant for my postdoc that, before I knew it, it was way too late to provide you with the Insolence you crave. Oh, well. Tomorrow for sure. In the meantime, I'll post a couple of bits of "classic" (if you can call it that) Insolence. This particular bit of insolence dates back nearly four years, all the way back to November 2006. Remember, if you haven't been reading at least four years, it's new to you! Besides, it's always fun (or disturbing) to me to see how well some of my older…
oracknows | August 4, 2010I haven't really taken much note of Andrew Wakefield in a while, and in general that's a very good thing indeed. However, I found out recently that somehow I missed this gem from around the time of Autism One:
That's right. I thought it was pretty bad that Andy Wakefield had appeared on Coast to Coast AM with George Noory, that all night conspiracy/UFO/paranormal radio show that's been so popular here in the U.S. for many years. It turns out that I missed an even worse one: Wakefield showing up on Alex Jones' even more looney conspiracy show, PrisonPlanet.tv. This is the same guy who…
oracknows | July 5, 2010Today is the third day of the three day weekend cobbled together from happenstance that the Fourth of July fell on the weekend this year. In any case, I'm still in a bit of vacation mode; so this post won't be as voluminous as you are used to. (Some of you are probably rejoicing at the lack of logorrhea.) I'm also working on my talk for the Science-Based Medicine workshops at TAM8. In fact, while working on my talk, I came across a little tidbit that forms the basis of this post.
Blog bud PalMD once coined a truly apt term to describe a certain form of disclaimer that's found on quack…
oracknows | June 9, 2010Well, I'm home.
As I've mentioned before, I attended the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) in Chicago. Although one of the problems with ASCO, at least for surgeons like me, is that it is a meeting completely dominated by medical oncology. Quite frankly, not that much of what is presented at ASCO has a lot of relevance to my surgical practice. There are exceptions, of course. In fact, Monday morning's sessions on breast cancer were the best of science-based medicine that will change practice. Perhaps I'll blog about that tomorrow or later in the week. As I…
oracknows | June 2, 2010After diving into a heapin' helpin' of sheer craziness over the last week or two (well, except for yesterday, when I deconstructed an acupuncture study, which, while not crazy, certainly was misguided), I think it's time for a bit of self-absorbed navel gazing. After all, isn't that what bloggin's all about? Oh, wait, that's what I do almost every day here. No, what I really mean is that I came across an article that struck rather close to home regarding my career trajectory. So, if you don't mind, for one day I'll leave behind the rabid anti-vaccine loons, the homepaths, the alt-med mavens,…
oracknows | January 27, 2010And now for something completely different.
I've been on a bit of a tear the last few days beating on Mike Adams, someone who arguably deserves the title of Woo--meister Supreme, but it's important to remember that defending science-based medicine is more than just having a little fun every now and then slapping down quacks. It's also about turning the same skeptical eyes that recognize the woo that people like Adams, Mercola, and the anti-vaccine movement promote onto scientific medicine when appropriate. That's because, at its best, science-based medicine is always trying to improve…
oracknows | January 24, 2010Mike Adams is confused.
I know, I know. Such a statement is akin to saying that water is wet (and that it doesn't have memory, at least not the mystical magical memories ascribed to it by homeopaths), that the sun rises in the East, or that writing an NIH R01 grant is hard, but there you go. Speaking of writing an NIH R01, that's exactly what I'm doing now, hence the decreased blogorrhea over the last few days, but sometimes trying to cram a five year project into the 13 pages (one page for specific aims and twelve to describe the project) makes my head hurt so much that reading and…
oracknows | January 21, 2010Last night was grant crunch time to get a truly serviceable draft to my collaborators today as promised, leaving enough time to revise it by the February 5 deadline. That means the blog has to take a hit today, which is a shame, because Joe Mercola and Age of Autism have laid down some idiocy this week that I'm just dying to take down. Oh, well, it'll wait, and if it won't I'm sure there'll be new idiocy to take down (or, if I need a break, some good science to discuss) when I come up for air again. (In the case of Mercola, it's part one of a promised three part series; so waiting until he's…
oracknows | January 13, 2010Yesterday, I expressed dismay at how Dr. Mehmet Oz, the protege of Oprah Winfrey who now has his own popular syndicated daily show, recently named the quackery known as reiki as number one in his list of "Dr. Oz's ulimate alternatie medicine secrets," leading me to characterize him as having "gone completely over to the Dark Side." You, my readers, kindly provided me with a YouTube video of actual segments from the show in which Dr. Oz has a reiki master demonstrate reiki on an audience member:
Ugh. Get aload of this introduction:
Now you're about to see things that are going to challenge…
oracknows | January 12, 2010For some reason, I've tended to give Dr. Mehmet Oz a bit of a free pass when it comes to promoting woo. I don't know why. Maybe it's because I just haven't paid that much attention to him. Perhaps it's because, even when he was on Oprah's show, he didn't delve as deeply into the woo as her other frequent guests, such as Christiane Northrup, Suzanne Sommers, or Jenny McCarthy. The one or two times I saw him with Oprah, usually online because I'm never home to watch Oprah during the day and on those rare days when I am home on a weekeday, trust me, I don't watch Oprah. Then Dr. Oz got his own…
oracknows | January 11, 2010Being a Doctor Who fan and all, I've often wondered what it would be like to be able to travel through time and visit times and places in history that I'm most interested in. For instance, being a World War II buff, I'd certainly want to be able to check out what every day life was like here in the U.S. during World War II. Given my affinity for psychedelic music and that I was only four years old during most of the Summer of Love, I'd think it cool to check out Haight-Ashbury, although I suspect my reaction to the reality of it would be similar to that of George Harrison when he checked it…
oracknows | December 14, 2009When the USPSTF issued new guidelines for who should undergo screening mammography, at what ages, and how often, it set off a firestorm of negative reactions. Some of this is not surprising, given that the reevaluation of the evidence for screening mammography led the USPSTF to recommend against its routine use in women between the ages of 40 and 50 who lack strong risk factors for breast cancer; i.e., who are at "average" risk. Add to that the recommendation that screening for women age 50 and older should only be every two years instead of every year plus the recommendation that women…
oracknows | December 3, 2009I'm beginning to understand why evolutionary biologists are so sensitive about how creationists abuse and twist any research that they think can be used to cast doubt upon evolution. Whenever there is research that changes the way we look at evolution or suggest aspects of it that we didn't appreciate before, where scientists get excited because they see an opportunity for better understanding of evolution, creationists see a chance to use it to launch specious and fallacious attacks against evolution. Sadly, there is no shortage of creationists willing to make fools of themselves to try to…
oracknows | November 9, 2009
This project is behind schedule. The reasons, I hope, are forgivable. First off, there was just too much other stuff going on last week, to the point where, even though I've read several chapters of Suzanne Somers' new book (if you can call it that) Knockout: Interviews with Doctors Who Are Curing Cancer--And How to Prevent Getting It in the First Place (Random House website), I couldn't force myself to sit down in front of the computer, copy of Knockout in front of me in order to pick choice brain-necrosing quotes from. Besides, the whole issue of Desiree Jennings came up, as well as a…
oracknows | November 7, 2009...back when they believed that humors were responsible for your health. Oh, yes, I know it's now "politically or medically incorrect" now to practice medicine the way they did in the days of our Founding Fathers, but that's because the socialist libero-Nazis took that away from us. After all, remember who else didn't answer medical questions.
That's right. Hitler!
We must take back our country and the medicine of the Founding Fathers, lest our organs organize against us and the government be given the power to remove your appendix and eat it in front of you and your children!
Genius!
oracknows | October 22, 2009Apparently, some of my readers in Canada are getting this when they look at any of my Suzanne Somers posts:
No other country seems to be affected; at least, no readers from other countries have reported the problem to me.
This will not do. The Overlords have been informed. In the meantime, if you are in Canada, I apologize. Ads for such rank quackery and misinformation have no more place on ScienceBlogs than the creationist ads that popped up a while ago. Fortunately, from my locale, I have not been able to replicate the problem. However, if you are in a country other than Canada and see…
neurophilosophy | October 16, 2009THINKING of and saying a word is something that most of us do effortlessly many times a day. This involves a number of steps - we must select the appropriate word, decide on the proper tense, and also pronounce it correctly. The neural computations underlying these tasks are highly complex, and whether the brain performs them all at the same time, or one after the other, has been a subject of debate.
This debate has now apparently been settled, by a team of American researchers who had the rare opportunity to investigate language processing in conscious epileptic patients undergoing surgery…
oracknows | October 7, 2009As you may have noticed, I've fallen into a groove (or, depending on your point of view, a rut) writing about anti-vaccine lunacy. The reason is simple. While I was busy going nuts over Bill Maher's receiving the Richard Dawkins Award, the anti-vaccine movement has been busy, and there are some things I need to address that had backed up while I was distracted. There's one more thing I need to address before I move on to other topics.
Over the last couple of months, I've noticed something about the anti-vaccine movement. Specifically, I've noticed that the mavens of pseudoscience that make up…