Categories
Complementary and alternative medicine Friday Woo Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Your Friday Dose of Woo: Wands imploding, sort of

Now this is unexpected. Normally, I find my victims/targets/subjects for my usual end-of-the-workweek bit of fun and skepticism from one of two sources. Either a reader sends a link to some woo or other that desperately deserves a little bit of Orac’s loving attention, or in my wanderings across blogosphere I find some little (or […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Pseudoscience, quackery, crankery, and the ad hominem

Over the weekend, it appears that a post of mine, in which I included a link to a video of comic Tim Slagle doing the comedy routine that, in my never-ending effort to live up to the stereotype of the humorless skeptic that the credulous like so much, I castigated for its misrepresentations of science […]

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Blogging Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Crank argumentation

Arguing with cranks can be an extremely frustrating experience, which is why I don’t do it very often anymore except on my terms on this blog. Yes, I did cut my skeptical teeth, so to speak, for several years doing just that in the totally unmoderated and wild free-for-all known as Usenet before I dipped […]

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Humor Politics Pseudoscience Skepticism/critical thinking

A blast from the global warming past (on this blog, that is)

Over the summer, I got into a bit of an argument with a certain Libertarian comic named Tim Slagle who doesn’t seem to accept the scientific consensus that anthropogenic global warming is happening or that it is a potentially grave problem. In a perilous bit of criticism, given that comedy often depends on saying stupid […]

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Cancer Medicine Politics Pseudoscience Skepticism/critical thinking

It’s nice when your efforts are appreciated by those who need them the most…

…at least, that was my first reaction when I first read this reaction by the Karen Malec of the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer to posts by Mark Chu-Carroll and myself pointing out the numerous flaws in the latest “study” being circulated to “support” a link between abortion and breast cancer. Then I thought about it. […]