medicine
oracknows | March 16, 2006Here's an appropriate one for St. Patrick's Day:
You Are Guinness
You know beer well, and you'll only drink the best beers in the world.
Watered down beers disgust you, as do the people who drink them.
When you drink, you tend to become a bit of a know it all - especially about subjects you don't know well.
But your friends tolerate your drunken ways, because you introduce them to the best beers around.
What's Your Beer Personality?
Although I do like Guinness, it's not my favorite beer. Personally, I prefer Magic Hat No. 9, Goose Island Honker's Ale, Newcastle Brown, and various brown…
oracknows | March 16, 2006Since I've found myself drawn into blogging about vaccines and the antivaccination movement so much, I was interested to learn of a new project dedicated to discussing the ethical issues involved with vaccination being launched at the University of Pennsylvania:
The Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine announced the beginning of an 18 month project to examine the field of vaccine development and use. Plans call for providing an ethical framework to help guide researchers, pharmaceutical companies, public-health agencies, health-care providers, and…
oracknows | March 15, 2006It's that time again!
The 30th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle has been posted over at Paige's Page, and it's a big one, chock full of skeptical bloggy goodness, delivered in a straight-up style:
Welcome to the 30th Skeptic's Circle, the first one with a theme song!
Come and listen to my story about a man named Jed ...
Okay, I didn't say it was an original theme song, nor did I say it was relevant, but it is kinda catchy. But, to move on to the main subject of tonight's symposium, come on in, set a spell, take your shoes off, and to phrase things as Jed Clampett would, "let's commence to…
oracknows | March 15, 2006A new Tangled Bank is up at fellow ScienceBlogger grrlscientist's Living the Scientific Life. Time to catch up on the world of science as reported in the blogosphere over the last two weeks.
While you're perusing the science, you might also want to wander over to Evolgen and join him and the Genetics Society of America to protest the retreat from support of biomedical research that the President's proposed budget for FY 2007 represents. As I pointed out not long ago, the total NIH budget is flat, without even an adjustment for inflation, and the budget of the National Cancer Institute has…
grrlscientist | March 14, 2006Welcome to the 49th issue of Tangled Bank. Honestly, I was blown away by the large number of contributions that I received (if I counted correctly, there are 34 essays in this issue). This response was unexpected, and I was awake almost all night preparing this for you, so I hope you are ready to settle in with a glass of wine while you devote your time and brain space to reading and thinking about science, nature and medicine. If there are any broken links, please notify me via email and I will fix as soon as humanly possible (well, after I wake up from my nap).
Evolution
My drinking pal and…
oracknows | March 14, 2006The 30th Meeting of the Skeptics' Circle is scheduled to appear at Paige's Page on Thursday, March 16. It's less than two days away. But, even more importantly, the deadline is less than 24 hours away. Submissions are due Wednesday night. Get them to Paige by tomorrow night if you want your skepticism to be included in this week's Circle!
oracknows | March 14, 2006Grand Rounds, vol. 2, no. 25 has been posted over at GeekNurse. It's time once again to enjoy the best medical blogging from the last few weeks.
oracknows | March 14, 2006I'm beginning to fear for Kathleen Seidel.
No, I don't fear for her safety, but I do fear for her sanity. You see, she's spent way too much time delving into the house organ of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), namely The Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons (with the unfortunate abbreviation JAPS, which is why they probably insist on using JPANDS), formerly known as Medical Sentinel. I've written about JPANDS before, pointing out that its claim of peer review is a sham and that it has an explicitly antivaccine agenda, not to mention its far right wing…
oracknows | March 13, 2006{NOTE: Here is the post that was delayed last week due to my announcement of arson at the Holocaust History Project.}
It occurs to me that I haven't done much straight science blogging lately. Yes, debunking pseudoscience and quackery is fun, useful, and has the potential to educate people about how science is misused, but this is ScienceBlogs. Since arriving here four weeks ago, I haven't fulfilled my quota of science blogging, and it's time to remedy that.
Fortunately, while perusing a recent issue of Cancer Research, I found just the ticket, something that would let me discuss science and…
oracknows | March 11, 2006Given the spring-like weather we've been enjoying the last couple of days, I happened across a reminder of what the weather was like just a few weeks ago. I've never understood the attraction of doing this for fun. To me it looks profoundly unpleasant at best.
Insanity.
oracknows | March 11, 2006Just a reminder that the Skeptics' Circle is nearly upon us. It's scheduled to appear this Thursday at Paiges' Page. Get your submissions to Paige at paige@paiges-page.net before Wednesday night. The guidelines can be found here, with more detail than you probably want to know here.
Let's help Paige keep up the tradition of great Meetings of the Skeptics' Circle!
oracknows | March 10, 2006It's good to see the Pooflinger back in action. It really is. I don't even mind that he's starting to muscle in on my territory, because, as he points out, alties need poo-love too. In the process He's unearthed a "gem" of altie wackiness that even I had never encountered before.
Better still, he's returned to deconstructing that tome of creationist nuttiness, The Evolution Cruncher.
oracknows | March 9, 2006Light blogging today, as I'm in the O.R. (Although there will be one more brief post, which, thanks to the wonders of Movable Type's ability to let me schedule a time when posts are published, will be appearing early this afternoon, while I'm still working.The reason why I'm delaying it will, hopefully, be apparent.)
Light blogging or not, I couldn't resist mentioning a post by Kathleen Seidel in which she's picked up on something that I hadn't noticed but wish I had.
In a long, multi-topic "roundup" sort of post, near the end, she mentions RFK Jr.'s essay Tobacco Science and the Thimerosal…
oracknows | March 7, 2006Geez, it snuck up on me this week. Grand Rounds vol. 2, no. 24 has been posted at Emergiblog, and I totally forgot to submit some custom Respectful Insolence.
Go forth and experience the best that the Orac-less medical blogosphere has to offer. (It's probably an improvement over the weeks when I do submit something.)
oracknows | March 6, 2006I was going to give this a rest for a while, but this is too good not to post a brief note about.
Posted in the comments of my piece debunking the Geiers' pseudoscience and their laughable "scientific" article claiming to show a decrease in the rate of new cases of autism since late 2002, when thimerosal was removed from vaccines completely other than some flu vaccines was this gem of a comment, by one MarkCC, which stated the essence of what was wrong with the Geiers' so-called "statistical analysis" of the VAERS database:
Here's the key, fundamental issue: when you're doing statistical…
oracknows | March 6, 2006Curse you, Mark and David Geier.
I'm getting tired of having to subject my scientific and critical thinking skills to the assaults on science and reason that you routinely publish in dubious journals to use as weapons in your apparently never-ending crusade to extract as much money as possible out of vaccine manufacturers and the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. Dissecting your pseudoscientific claims causes me pain, not so much that I'm driven to take a hiatus from blogging, as Matt was by Kent Hovind's creationism, but almost.
I had hoped to let this cup pass, given how much I've…
oracknows | March 5, 2006A while back, I mentioned how the budget proposed in the President's budget for the NIH for fiscal year 2007 was flat. It turns out that, for those of us in the field of cancer research, it's worse than that. Making the rounds at our cancer institute is an e-mail from one of the higher-ups, which points out the following sobering facts about the budget for the National Cancer Institute (the FY 2007 proposed budget for HHS can be found here, particularly page 34):
The President's budget proposal submitted to Congress will keep funding for the National Institutes of Health flat at $28.587…
oracknows | March 2, 2006I had wanted to let this cup pass, but couldn't, not after several readers e-mailed it to me and I went and experienced its inanity first hand. As Michael Corleone said in The Godfather, Part III: "Just when I thought I was finally out, they drag me back in again!" In this case, it was Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. who did the dragging.
Yes, RFK Jr. has dropped one more steamy, stinky turd on the blogosphere. No, it's not nearly as big and stinky as the first one that he dropped back in June, but that's almost certainly only because it's a short blog piece, rather than a full feature article for…
oracknows | March 1, 2006Tangled Bank #48 has been posted at fellow ScienceBlogger Tara's Aetiology.
Go forth and enjoy the best the science blogosphere has to offer.
While I'm carnival barking, don't forget that the deadline for the Skeptics' Circle is tonight. The Circle is scheduled to appear at The Huge Entity (cue many puns and jokes using the word "huge") tomorrow. You still have a few hours left to submit your skepticism to him to be included.