complementary and alternative medicine
oracknows | July 23, 2010Even after having been at this skeptical medical blogging game for nearly six years, every so often I still come across woo about which I had been previously unaware. It's hard to believe, but it's true. In fact, I'm beginning to think that, even if I were to keep blogging until I drop dead (hopefully at least thirty or forty years in the future), as I type out my last extra cantankerous bit of not-so-Respectful Insolence (my cantankerousness merely increasing with advancing age, of course), I would come across some new and spectacular form of woo that somehow had been missed during my forty-…
oracknows | July 22, 2010As you may have heard, the strike is over. That doesn't mean the crisis is over, nor does it necessarily mean that I will be staying with ScienceBlogs, but I view management's response as a positive move that may be enough to keep me here. Now management needs to lose the Google ads for quackery, and then we have something to talk about. It seems that every time our benevolent overlords kill one set of quack ads, they disappear for a short while, only to reappear in a different guise. I think they understand that. At least I hope so.
In the meantime, I will speak no further of these issues,…
oracknows | July 21, 2010While the drama continues and interesting developments occur, I've found that I actually don't mind taking a couple of days off. Don't worry. Blogging's a bug that's gotten into me and, like PZ, I'll probably start twitching and seizing if I go too long without producing one of my patented logorrheic screeds of pure insolence, be it here, at my super not-so-secret other blog, or on some other blogging platform. At least 4,000 words would be best. Still, I should take a couple of days off more often and not under circumstances like the current upheaval.
Upheaval or no upheaval, strike or no…
oracknows | July 20, 2010There's one thing I like to emphasize to people who complain that this blog exists only to "bash 'alternative' medicine," and that's that it doesn't. This blog exists, besides to champion science and critical thinking (and, of course, to feed my ravenous ego), in order to champion medicine based on science against all manner of dubious practices. Part of that purpose involves understanding and accepting that science-based medicine is not perfect. It is not some sort of panacea. Rather, it has many shortcomings and all too often does not live up to its promise. Our argument is merely that,…
oracknows | July 19, 2010"I know you are, but what am I?"
That's basically the child's version of a familiar logical fallacy known as the tu quoque, which basically means, "You, too!" It's a very simple and simplistic logical fallacy that tries to argue that, if one's trait shares one or more of the same bad traits of the people he is criticizing, then his arguments can be dismissed. It's sometimes very effective in that implied within the fallacy is a charge of hypocrisy. As a diversionary tactic, it can be very effective.
Not too surprisingly, I've found a doozy of an example of just this fallacy over at the other…
oracknows | July 16, 2010
Ever since I somehow stumbled into a niche in the blogosphere where I seem to be one of a handful of go-to bloggers for issues having to do with vaccines and the anti-vaccine movement, like Spider-Man I realize that with great power comes great responsibility.
Wait a minute. That beginning was too pompous and pretentious even for me. I know it's hard to believe, but even Orac has limits when it comes to pretentiousness.
Orac-ian pomposity aside, there are indeed certain topics that I can't resist. Whether it's because they intensely interest me or my being an aforementioned "go-to" blogger…
oracknows | July 15, 2010As much fun as I had at TAM8, there is one consequence of being out of town and not paying attention to the blog or the Internet as much as I usually do. Well, actually, there are multiple consequences. One is a momentary lapse in insanity. In other words, it's good for the mental health to cut back on the blogging. True, such is the level of my insanity that I didn't just stop altogether for five or six days, as I probably should have, but what can I say? Another consequence is that inevitably one or more things pop up that under normal conditions I'd be going full mental Orac on that…
oracknows | July 14, 2010Wendy, I'm home.
Oh, wait a minute. I'm not that crazy. Yet.
Sometimes, though, it does seem as though the constant barrage of quackery, anti-vaccine pseudoscience, and pseudoscience in general might drive me to become like poor Jack Torrence of the Stephen King novel and movie The Shining. Fortunately for me, I discovered that there really are people out there who share my passion for science and reason and my dislike of woo. Unfortunately, I waited several years before venturing forth to gatherings of like-minded (and sometimes not-so-like-minded) skeptics to meet people in person and start…
oracknows | July 13, 2010Finally, I'm winging my way back home after TAM8 plus a couple of days. It seems as though I've been away a long time, even though it's only been less than six days. While I'm on a travel day, check out this video that a few of you have been sending me:
Not bad. Not bad at all. How'd I miss it a couple of months ago when it first popped up on YouTube?
oracknows | July 13, 2010Remember Doctors Data? It's the highly dubious medical laboratory that Trine Tsouderos exposed in her series on the quackery that is the "autism biomed" movement. A couple of weeks ago, Doctors Data also decided to launch what appears to be frivolous lawsuit against the creator and maintainer of the Quackwatch website, Steve Barrett; i.e. a SLAPP lawsuit.
Apparently unsatisfied with its legal thuggery against Steve Barrett, Doctors Data has apparently decided to plumb new depths by using new media to threaten other bloggers. This time around, Doctors Data has actually Tweeted a cease and…
oracknows | July 12, 2010Although The Amazing Meeting is now over, my vacation is not, at least not yet. My wife and I decided to take an extra couple of days off before winging our way home tomorrow. Originally I had planned on posting "reruns" for a couple of days, but something popped up that I felt obligated to comment on. I knew this was coming, thanks to the inimitable Australian skeptic and promoter of science-based medicine Dr. Rachie, with whom I shared the podium both for the Science-Based Medicine Workshop and on a panel on Saturday at TAM. She told me that something would be coming on Monday (Australian…
oracknows | July 12, 2010...then how come there are so many believers in homeopathy?
Truly, a scientific mystery...
oracknows | July 8, 2010I've been a critic of Arianna Huffington's massive group blog, The Huffington Post, since three weeks after it first blighted the blogosphere. That's when I first noticed that the "health" section (such as it is) of HuffPo had already become a wretched hive of scum and anti-vaccine quackery, something I began documenting again and again and again and again and again over five years ago, before Salon.com and Rolling Stone flushed their credibility right down the crapper with Robert F. Kennedy's infamous conspiracy mongering about thimerosal in vaccines. Indeed, I continue to document the…
oracknows | July 6, 2010Oh, goody.
It looks as though the fall is going to be a repeat of the spring as far as anti-vaccine lunacy goes. This spring, we had the release of a book by the now disgraced granddaddy of the most recent incarnation of the anti-vaccine movement, Andrew Wakefield. The book, entitled Callous Disregard: Autism and Vaccines--The Truth Behind a Tragedy, was released to great fanfare by the antivaccine movement and then promptly tanked. This is not surprising, given how bad it apparently was. Only the die hards would want a copy, and it's currently languishing around number 23,576 on the Amazon…
oracknows | July 6, 2010Remember Dr. David Katz? Fellow skeptic and supporter of science-based medicine Dr. Steve Novella is unfortunate to be saddle with Dr. Katz on the same faculty as him at Yale. He achieved some notoriety a couple of years ago when at a Yale conference on complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), he laid down this gem:
I think we have to look beyond the results of RCTs in order to address patient needs today, and to do that I've arrived at the concept of a more fluid form of evidence than many of us have imbibed from our medical educations.
In one fell swoop, Dr. Katz rallied supporters of…
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 | July 4, 2010Happy Fourth of July, everyone! Since it is a holiday here in the States, I'm chilling out and recovering. I'll try to be back tomorrow, but, worst case scenario, I'll be back for sure on Tuesday. (Monday just so happens to be a holiday, too, this year. Gotta have those three day weekends.) In the meantime, here's a little something you might want to know about, particularly if you live in New York City..
The skeptics in Chicago did a truly excellent job countering what fortunately turned out to be not much of an anti-vaccine "protest." Now here's a chance for NYC skeptics (both belonging to…
oracknows | July 2, 2010Every so often, real life intrudes on blogging, preventing the creation of fresh Insolence, at least Insolence of the quality that you've come to expect. This is one of those times. So enjoy this bit of Classic Insolence from almost exactly four years ago, in July 2006. Also remember that, if you've been reading less than four years, it's probably new to you, and, even if you have been reading more than four years, it's fun to see how posts like this have aged. (Sometimes I shudder when I go back to read stuff that I wrote four or five years ago.)
Come to think of it, if you have been reading…
oracknows | July 1, 2010Regular readers may have noticed something happening around ScienceBlogs. As PZ pointed out, a little malware somehow infiltrated the ScienceBlogs collective, and many of us appear to have turned into zombies. It's a veritable Zombie Day, complete with illustrations by Joseph Hewitt, creator of Gearhead.
Obviously, with anything having to do with zombies, there's only one thing for this blog, namely a certain undead German dictator with an insatiable thirst for human brains, who leaves idiotic analogies in his wake. Unfortunately, with the 2008 election being behind us, there was a dearth of…
oracknows | June 30, 2010First, there was the history of Andrew Wakefield and the MMR vaccine in cartoon form. Now there's the history of homeopathy (click on the image):
The cartoonist, Darryl Cunningham, says this is a first try at such a history, a beta version, if you will. It's definitely a good start, particularly the part about how homeopaths in Africa have advocated using homeopathic nostrums to prevent and treat malaria. Particularly true is the conclusion that homeopathy is not science. It is faith. I'd also add that, as I've mentioned before, it's also basically sympathetic magic.