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.
Via Modern Mechanix, an ad from 1938:
Does this make you think of something other than a medical ad? Maybe it's the whole thing about the "human hand" being placed on the groin as a truss.
Actually, the best "support" for a "rupture" (a.k.a. an inguinal hernia) these days is some polypropylene…
With the Autism Omnibus trial having finished its first week looking at the first test case of Michelle Cedillo, a very unfortunate girl with multiple medical problems and autism, for whose "vaccine injury" her parents are seeking compensation, it's not surprising that we'd find some slime bubbling…
I must confess that I never really grokked the whole "LOL Cat" thing. I must admit to being a bit puzzled by the phenomenon when it metastasized to ScienceBlogs and some of my fellow SBers applied it to creationists, spurred on by Mark H at denialism.com (althogh I must admit that I nonetheless…
Here we go again. Time really flies when you're having fun, and the Skeptics' Circle is no exception. Hard as it is to believe after the last outstanding entry, there's less than a week before the blogosphere is (hopefully) graced with another session of skepticism and critical thinking, just the…
Alright, now they've gone too far.
I can take a lot from woo-meisters. I can watch them claim that water has some sort of "memory" and that diluting a compound to nonexistence somehow seemingly by magic makes it more powerful and chuckle at their silliness. I can listen to them claim that by "…
Things have been very quiet as far as the story of Katie Wernecke, the 14-year-old girl with lymphoma whose parents fought a legal battle with the State of Texas to be able to choose "alternative" therapy involving high dose vitamin C, despite the fact that her conventional therapeutic options had…
At the monthly faculty meeting of our cancer center the other day, we had just finished listening to an invited talk by an ethicist about medical technology and the ethics of end-of-life care, when one of my colleagues happened to mention an article in the New York Times about how a perverse…
Is your qi weak? Is your aura not glowing as brightly and colorfully as it should? Is your ability to take on ten masked men who conveniently come at you no more than one or two at a time getting shaky, so that you're no longer sure that you can handle more than, say, five evil-doers? Do you feel…
Via Boing-Boing, I learn that Don Herbert, a.k.a. "Mr. Wizard," has died.
He lived to a ripe old age of 89. Perhaps the best tribute to him is this:
"Over the years, Don has been personally responsible for more people going into the sciences than any other single person in this country," George…
Yesterday, I discussed how pseudoscience--nay, antiscience--may well triumph over science in the Autism Omnibus trial presently going on. One reason that this might happen is because of the primacy of feelings over evidence among the plaintiffs, to whose power even the Special Masters running the…
I normally like Crooks and Liars.
However, this time around, while blogging about the Autism Omnibus, Nicole let me down. Saying that "I don't pretend to have any special medical knowledge; so I will link both sides of the thimerosal debate," she then linked to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s totally…
The first day's testimony for the Autism Omnibus has been posted, and Autism Diva has the scoop.
I haven't had a chance to peruse the PDF file of the testimony, but what the Diva reports is plenty damning. Maybe I was wrong to be so pessimistic in my earlier post. Dr. H. Vasken Aposhian's…
Many of my fellow SBers have blogged about the Gallup poll showing just how scientifically ignorant Americans, and in particular Republicans, are:
PRINCETON, NJ -- The majority of Republicans in the United States do not believe the theory of evolution is true and do not believe that humans evolved…
The Autism Omnibus is now officially under way, having begun with the first test case, that of Cedillo v. Secretary of Health and Human Services. The Omnibus proceeding is the culmination of the legal cases brought to the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program by nearly 5,000 families who "feel" that…
After having been pointed yesterday to a video of an old Betty Boop short that strongly suggests that Boop may have been a homeopath, I couldn't resist clicking on the links to a couple of other old Betty Boop cartoons. One of them reminded me of just how different our culture was 72 years ago when…
Dedicated advocate of evidence-based medicine that I am, I am sometimes labeled by those who do not understand skepticism as a "shill" for big pharma. Of course, such accusations are simply the logical fallacy known as poisoning the well, in which the credulous engage in preemptive ad hominem…
Here is the myth of Simpsonwood being memorialized on the seventh anniversary of the meeting where, if you believe the mercury militia, the CDC, in cahoots with big pharma, tried to suppress the "truth" that thimerosal in vaccines causes autism. it is a myth that was popularized by Robert F.…
While reading through a mailing list I belong to, I came across a link that demonstrates that alternative medicine has been ingrained in popular culture since at least the 1920's and 1930's. Indeed, I never realized that that icon of flappers, Betty Boop, practiced homeopathy. Don't believe me?…
This article in Salon.com sums up my feelings about the whole Paris Hilton fiasco almost perfectly:
Even after years of watching Hilton direct the media like her own obedient little phalanx of winged monkeys, it would take a coldhearted cynic to doubt that Hilton was experiencing real pain and…
This is what Orac would look like this weekend if he were his blog mascot and if those piles of papers surrounding him were NIH grants.
Yes, NIH Study Section time is coming up in less than two weeks. It's grant review crunch time, and this is how I will be spending the remainder of my weekend,…
Car alarms probably annoy you. Certainly, they annoy me. I understand the reason for their existence, but some of them seem to be so finicky that just a truck driving by will set them off. Fortunately (or, unfortunately, depending on your point of view), there's the Orgasmalarm
If you're at work,…
Here's a tragic story:
NEW YORK - A medical examiner blamed a 17-year-old track star's death on the use of too much muscle cream, the kind used to soothe aching legs after exercise.
Arielle Newman, a cross-country runner at Notre Dame Academy on Staten Island, died after her body absorbed high…
It saddens people, but doesn't particularly surprise, when some professionals are killed in the line of duty. For professions such as soldier, police office, and firefighter, for example, it's expected that occasionally some will lose their lives in the line of duty because of the dangerous nature…
As we continue our countdown to having reached one full year of woo (namely, the one year anniversary of Your Friday Dose of Woo), it's occurred to me that there's one form of woo that I've dealt with before, but haven't revisited. It's a bit of woo that's so monumentally silly that it's hard to…
As I mentioned a few days ago, I was at the ASCO Meeting over the weekend, arriving home Tuesday evening. ASCO has to be, as far as I can tell, the largest cancer meeting in the world. How big? 30,000 or so attendees big. Hundreds of sessions and talks big. Filling most of McCormick Center in…
It's that time again, time for a respite from the annoying credulity that permeates the blogosphere. Indeed, that credulity has even invaded Respectful Insolence in the form of two--count 'em, two!--homeopaths invading an old throwaway post about homeopathy and a woo-meister in my recent chelation…
Date: June 4, 2007, 2 PM CDST
Place: University of Chicago's bookstore
Depressing. At what is supposed to be a bastion of science, we find Michael Behe's latest tripe on the same bookshelves as Stephen Jay Gould's books (see the shelf below). On the other hand, Creatures of Accident looks…
Sixty-three years ago today, Allied troops stormed the beaches of Normandy, thus opening up a Western Front in the war against Germany. It was the beginning of the end; eleven months later, Nazi Germany, beset from the East by the Soviet juggernaut and from the West by the Allies, collapsed. Today…
