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Biology Clinical trials Evolution Medicine Physics Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Is the “decline effect” really so mysterious?

NOTE: Orac was actually out rather late last night. It turns out that the more administrative responsibility he somehow seems to find the more he has to go out to dinner as a part of various cancer center-related functions. As a result, he is recycling a bit of recent material from elsewhere that he in […]

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Announcements Antivaccine nonsense Autism Biology Blog housekeeping Blogging Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Computers and social media Evolution Holocaust Holocaust denial Medicine Personal Physics Politics Quackery Science Skepticism/critical thinking Surgery World War II

Six years in the blogosphere…

Has it really been six years? Six years ago today, on a dim and dreary Saturday in December, almost on a whim I sat down, went to Blogspot, and started up the first version of Respectful Insolence with an introductory post with the cliched title, Please allow me to introduce myself. Here it is, six […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Who are the Terminator cranks?

As a part of a longer post where I was, for the most part, serious albeit sarcastic, I asked one question that I considered a bit of a throwaway joke. Oddly enough, the more I think about it, the more I think that it wasn’t such a joke. Here was my question: Perhaps we could […]

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Biology Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Anti-fluoridation crankery? How quaintly 1960s! I only wish it weren’t on ScienceBlogs

No, no, no, no, no! I hate it when a fellow ScienceBlogger goes astray! Fortunately, it’s been a long time indeed since I felt obligated to administer a dose of Insolence, Respectful or otherwise, to a fellow ScienceBlogger. It’s been even longer (as in, I think, never) that I’ve ever seen one whose resource I […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Removing science from anthropology: Parallels with medicine

I don’t recall if I ever mentioned this before, but back when I was in college I had quite the interest in a couple of sciences that you might not have expected or guessed at, namely anthropology and archaelogy. Indeed, an archeology class that I took as a senior was one of the most memorable […]