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.
This story's been floating around the blogosphere for a few days now, and I've been wanting to weigh in. Basically, Medicare is saying that it will no longer pay for conditions and treatments that result from hospital errors. Sounds reasonable on the surface, right? After all, if a surgeon leaves a…
You know, even though I know he's been a Republican talker for a long time, that he worked for the Nixon administration as a speechwriter and lawyer, I've always kind of liked Ben Stein. My wife and I used to like to watch Win Ben Stein's Money, and he was quite amusing as the principal in Ferris…
Good news! Dr. Roy Kerry, the quack whose careless use of intravenous chelation therapy for autism resulted in the death of a five year old autistic boy named Abubakar Tariq Nadama, will be charged with involuntary manslaughter:
PITTSBURGH - A doctor was charged with involuntary manslaughter…
It's been brought to my attention that Perry DeAngelis, regular contributor to The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe podcast, member of the New England Skeptical Society has passed away unexpectedly at far too young an age. I don't know any of the details, although as a regular listener to the…
Fellow SB'er Tara Smith, and academic neurologist Steve Novella have written an essential primer on the dangerous pseudoscience and quackery that is HIV/AIDS denialism. It's published in PLoS and is entitled HIV Denial in the Internet Era.
It makes a number of excellent points about the deadly…
Thanks to Blake, I now have The Enemies of Reason, Part 2:
My review of this episode is below the fold. I managed to BitTorrent the episode and watch it on my laptop on my flight back from Chicago last night. If you don't want to be influenced by my opinion before watching, watch the episode…
This has nothing to do with science, but this has to be the best headline ever:
British dwarf's penis gets stuck to hoover
Original story here.
Even better, the dwarf in question goes by the stage name Captain Dan the Demon Dwarf. I don't think there's anything to add here.
I've been meaning to mention this post by Sid Schwab of Surgeonsblog for a while now. It's a wonderful example of how nothing heals like surgical steel in even the most humble-seeming conditions. In this case, he's talking about anal fissures, a condition that makes defecation very painful. It…
My regular readers here know to what lengths I go to combat Holocaust denial on the Internet. It's a fairly regular topic on this blog, as is rebutting the lies Holocaust deniers routinely spout. Not surprisingly, Holocaust deniers like to try to portray me as either Jewish or somehow in the thrall…
After a lot of the not-so-Respectful Insolence⢠of the last couple of weeks, I've been meaning to get back to living up to the name of the overall mega-blog, namely ScienceBlogs. Meeting up with my fellow SB'ers over the weekend in New York Fortunately, last week a topic just so happened to pop…
Yes, I was there on Friday and Saturday, when more than half of the present complement of ScienceBloggers (a.k.a. "SB'ers" or "Sciblings") gathered in New York to meet, greet, and talk science, that is, between bouts of heavy drinking. (Fortunately, I was wise enough not to show up for the karaoke…
The answer, apparently, is yes, but only for a very short time.
I guess the whole exploding heads thing when people are exposed to vacuum (Outland) or just the very low atmospheric pressure on Mars (Total Recall) is a bit of an exaggeration.
Blog friend Abel over at Terra Sigillata pointed me to a story claiming that Oscar the Death Kitty, who became famous (or notorious) for his alleged ability to detect the impending death of residents of the nursing home at which he lives, so much so that some of the staff had even started calling…
For those of you who missed it, Steve Colbert explains what DNA is with Twisty the DNA Helix:
DNA: It's what makes you you.
I do have to admit, though, that it irritated me when Colbert referred to DNA as a "wonder protein" even though I'm sure it was part of the joke...
You know, the current crop of Presidential candidates has me bored to tears. None of them inspire, and the one that comes closest to maybe inspiring is too inexperienced and definitely not ready for prime time. Couple that with the fact that the election is nearly 15 months away but the campaign…
I knew it.
I knew it wouldn't be long before this happened. About three weeks ago, we had the Oscar the Death Cat, a.k.a. the kitty of doom. Given the discussions of animals and death and speculation that other animals might be able to "predict" impending death, you knew it was coming.
Behold the…
So, after nearly two weeks of torturing myself trying to put together an R01-level grant on short notice and make it actually competitive, I'm finally free. The grant has been submitted (amazingly, the online submission process went through without a hitch), and, sleep-deprived but still hopped up…
Yes!
As intelligent and powerful as he is, Orac has always lacked something, and that's mobility. He's always been more or less at the mercy of the humans with whom he travels when it comes to locomotion. In short, being a clear box of blinking lights, he has to be carried everywhere, sometimes in…
It's here, and it's on Google Video. I watched it last night, and it was a blistering attack on the irrationality that is so common in our society:
Part I begins with Richard Dawkins sitting in on some sort of New Age chanting ceremony (the discomfited look on his face is priceless to watch),…
[Note: Part I is here.]
I tell ya, I stay up all night putting the finishing touches on a grant, and what happens? Mark Hoofnagle over at Denialism.com finds a real hum-dinger of stupidity published in the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal. Unfortunately (or fortunately, given the rampant…
Remember a couple of months ago, when I discussed testimony at the Autism Omnibus trial that showed how Andrew Wakefield had failed to do the controls when running PCR that would have revealed that the results that he interpreted as the presence of the measles virus from a vaccine strain in the…
I'm guessing there will be a lot of--shall we say?--disagreement with this one.
I'm always appropriately skeptical of IQ studies, including this one. However, if you actually believe this survey (and what physician wouldn't want to believe it?), apparently as a profession physicians have the…
Yikes!
In my grant writing frenzy the last few days, this could easily have been me:
Jasmine Willis, 17, developed a fever and began hyperventilating after drinking seven double espressos while working at her family's sandwich shop.
The student, of Stanley, County Durham, was taken to the…
It arrived a little early, but it's here now, the latest, greatest edition of Tangled Bank is now posted over at Fish Feet. Go now and get caught up on the best science blogging of the past fortnight.
Via Pure Pedantry, I've become aware of a post that resonates over here, given the recent series of posts I did about a certain comic who, unable to dispute the science behind global warming or the health hazards of secondhand smoke in any serious way, has a penchant for labeling scientists who…
It's that time of year again! Time for the one Center of the NIH dedicated to studying "remedies," regardless of how scientifically implausible or lacking in evidence to support them, the National Center for Complimentary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) to put forth its budget request for FY 2008…
Since I'm still immersed in grant writing, to start the afternoon off, here's one that I saw a week ago but never got around to answering. It's a question from this week's host of the Skeptics' Circle, Bronze Dog, over at (appropriately enough) The Bronze Blog, who asks:
You've been captured by…
I debated for a while about whether or not I wanted to comment on this one. The reason, of course, is that, to some extent, I've commented on a similar article before. Also, given the utter contempt that the blogger who posted this series holds me in and his delusion that I am somehow "obsessed"…
Science tattoos have been all the rage lately. Even though I'm a scientist, I'm also a surgeon; so naturally I was wondering if there was anything that I'd like to see too.
There is.
Over at Street Anatomy, there's a great collection of anatomy tattoos. Anyone who has any surgery-related tattoos…
