Orac is the nom de blog of a humble surgeon/scientist who has an ego just big enough to delude himself that someone, somewhere might actually give a rodent's posterior about his copious verbal meanderings, but just barely small enough to admit to himself that few probably will. That surgeon is otherwise known as David Gorski. That Orac has chosen his nom de blog based on a rather cranky and arrogant computer shaped like a clear box of blinking lights that he originally encountered when he became a fan of a 30 year old British SF television show whose special effects were renowned for their BBC/Doctor Who-style low budget look, but whose stories nonetheless resulted in some of the best, most innovative science fiction ever televised, should tell you nearly all that you need to know about Orac. (That, and the length of the preceding sentence.)
DISCLAIMER: The various written meanderings here are the opinions of Orac and Orac alone, written on his own time. They should never be construed as representing the opinions of any other person or entity, especially Orac's cancer center, department of surgery, medical school, or university. Also note that Orac is nonpartisan; he is more than willing to criticize the statements of anyone, regardless of of political leanings, if that anyone advocates pseudoscience or quackery. Finally, medical commentary is not to be construed in any way as medical advice.
Dr. Paul Offit's book Autism's False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure has hit the bookstores, and, as predicted, the mercury militia is going into a frenzy of spin and smear. As is usual, because they have no science to support their viewpoint, they are reduced to…
One of the aspects of blogging that I've come to like is the ability to follow a story's evolution over the long term and to comment on new developments as they come along. If you're good at blogging, you can take that story and make it your own, adding it to your list of "signature" issues for…
...sometimes the good guys win.
Congratulations to Ben Goldacre for taking on the supplement quack Matthias Rath and prevailing. That he did it even in the notoriously plaintiff-friendly U.K. court system is even better. Indeed, The Guardian also deserves kudos for supporting Ben in this.
This case…
After yesterday's lovefest that really did go to my head. Really, when I wrote it I wasn't trolling for praise, although in retrospect it now does kind of look that way to me. I was simply expressing amazement that anyone would listen to a pseudonymous (although not really anonymous anymore)…
Even after over three years at this, I still find it amazing that as many people read my verbal meanderings as in fact do. In fact, I still can't believe that I'm one of the more popular medical bloggers out there. True, I'll probably never approach the traffic and readership of the huge political…
I've often written about the intersection of medicine and religion. Most commonly, I've lamented how the faithful advocate inappropriately injecting religion into the doctor-patient relationship in a manner that risks imposing the religion of the health care practitioner on the patient, sometimes…
The 95th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle has been posted by Bob Carroll over at Skeptimedia:
Seven years ago, The Very Lost Prophecies of Michel Nostradamus were found by Quantum Beam Radium and Harvard Veritas Schwartz in a Peruvian cave. Dr. Schwartz's validated spirit guide directed the pair to…
There are some days when I just don't feel like posting the usual stuff, and September 11 is just one of those days. So today there'll be no woo-bashing, no evisceration of postmodernist nonsense, no sarcastic assaults on antivaccinationists. In a more serious vein, there won't be any analyses of…
This video was shot by Bob and Bri, who in 2001 lived in a high rise a mere 500 yards from the North Tower. On this seventh anniversary of the September 11 attacks, I think it's important to post this again. It is the most prolonged and continuous video of the attack that I have seen, and, as such…
As angry as you justifiably may be at times at the medical profession, it's (usually) not our fault.
Dr. Rob Explains why.
I'm sure PalMD understands even better than I do.
I hate postmodernism.
Well, not exactly postmodernism per se, but I hate it when pseudoscientists and purveyors of dubious "alternative" medicine treatments invoke bizarre postmodernist-sounding arguments to attack science or, in the case of medicine, science- and evidence-based medicine. Usually…
Well, here's a rare bit of good news in the endless tedium that has become the U.S. election. It appears that Barack Obama has ticked off the antivaccine contingent. I know, I know, I said I would try to lay off this topic for a few days, but this is just too amusing. Apparently, he's gone a long…
If there's one thing I really detest, it's cancer quackery. Indeed, one of the very earliest posts on this blog was about this very topic, and applying science, skepticism, and critical thinking to extraordinary claims of cancer cures has remained a major theme of this blog ever since. Shortly…
"One dumb tumor is still smarter than ten smart oncologists."
--George Sledge, MD
My only retort is that, slowly but surely, oncologists and we oncologic surgeons are getting smarter.
If there's one thing that cancer researchers, indeed most biomedical researchers in the U.S., know today it's that the research funding climate sucks right now. Indeed, after the completion of the near-doubling of the NIH budget in 2003, during which time it was flying high, the NIH budget in…
It's almost here yet again. (Man, how time flies!)
This Thursday (September 11), longtime skeptic extraordinaire Robert Carroll, the man behind the indispensable Skeptic's Dictionary, will be hosting the 95th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle at Skeptimedia. That's a mere four days from now! I can't…
...is through his plush guts, as Liz Ditz tells me:
I particularly like the plush pancreas, even though I haven't done pancreatic surgery on a regular basis since the 1990s. I'm a little confused, though, about why the plush gallbladder is purple instead of green. Surgeons really, really hate to…
I guess I'm just going to have to face it. I'm entering a period of lots of vaccine blogging again. After all, Jenny McCarthy's book is coming out this month, and I've heard rumblings that she's scheduled to be on the undisputed Queen of Woo Oprah Winfrey's TV show later this month; so beware.…
I've railed on more than one occasion about how much I detest science by press release. For one thing, it bypasses the peer review process and reports results directly to the public, which to me is a strike against any study. Indeed, releasing results by press release or using a press release to…
As usual, when Jon Stewart nails it:
My goodness! Two political posts in a row. I'd better watch myself, or I'll become one of those dime-a-dozen political bloggers that I complain about. Not that I count this, given that it's just a Daily Show video clip. Still, it's so spot-on that I couldn't…
I'm a Detroit guy.
I was born there and raised there for the first ten years of my life. After that, my family moved to the suburbs, but still Detroit's my hometown, even though I spent 20 years away from southeast Michigan. Consequently, I really, really hated what has been happening there…
This is getting to be monotonous, but it's a monotony that I like, as should anyone who supports scientific medicine and hates the resurgence of infectious diseases that antivaccinationists have been causing of late with their fearmongering about vaccines that frightens parents into refusing to…
Since I've been discussing histidine and histamine today (how's that for a segue to an entirely different topic?), it seems like the perfect time to mention a story I saw yesterday about the ten worst cities for fall pollen, such as ragweed, according to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America…
Some people should keep their "gut feelings" to themselves.
You know the type: People who have no knowledge about a topic or, even worse, just enough knowledge to sound as if they have a clue about it to people who don't have a clue but who are at the same time easily spotted as utterly and…
ResearchBlogging.org, that aggregator for blogging about peer-reviewed scientific research, has been given a makeover and a major overhaul. New features include:
There will be much, much more on our official launch date of September 2, but here is a partial list of new features:
Multiple language…
Hanging out last night, the final night of a three day holiday weekend, I was momentarily at a loss for what to write. For one thing, having spent a good chunk of the last three days unpacking the remaining stuff we've had in our basement in boxes for the last six or seven months, my wife and I had…
Say it ain't so!
Skeptics' Circle host from earlier this year Rod Clark informs me that another celebrity has been sucked into maw of antivaccine propagandizing disguised as an autism charity. The one luring these celebrities in, of course, is that tireless, ever-Indigo campaigner against vaccines…
This totally slipped my mind, and I've been meaning to mention it for a few days now, which makes the holiday weekend a perfect time to mention it. Seed Magazine and ScienceBlogs are supporting an effort to raise $10,000 for various science projects supported by DonorsChoose. To help the cause, all…
As my fellow Americans (ack! I'm sounding like a politician!) know, this happens to be a holiday weekend in the States, Monday being Labor Day. Given that, I'm taking it easy blogging until Tuesday, given that most people (in the U.S. at least) are probably out taking advantage of the opportunity…