Tales from the helicopter
oracknows | March 10, 2017[NOTE: As I mentioned yesterday, our power outage continues, and, thanks to having to decamp to a hotel last night, I didn't have time to produce new Insolence. So I thought I'd repost a "classic" from 11 years ago that I don't believe I've ever reposted before during vacation or otherwise. It represents a sort of blogging that I haven't done for years, just a personal story with nothing to do with my usual topics, such as pseudoscience, quackery, clinical trials, and basic science. This story is based on a real patient encounter from around 25 years ago, but details have been changed.]
I don…
oracknows | August 25, 2016I’ve mentioned on quite a few occasions that there’s a quote attributed to philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer that is much beloved of cranks:
All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
I also like to point out that Schopenhauer probably never said this and just how silly the thought behind this quote is when you think about it. Unfortunately, as I was perusing Twitter yesterday, I couldn’t help but think of this quote, but not in the way quacks and cranks usually intend. Rather, I was thinking of…
oracknows | August 14, 2006Here's a feature I've been meaning to start almost since I started this blog, a series along the line of Dr. Bard Parker's Tales of the Trauma Service. Oddly enough, it only took me over a year and a half to get around to writing the first entry, for reasons that, quite frankly, I don't know. It just sort of got away from me. (And, believe it or not, there is at least one more series idea I've had floating around just as long.) It's not scientific, but it is medical, and in particular surgical.
I don't recall if I have mentioned this before on the blog, but for about two and a half years when…