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Medicine Politics Religion Science

Science leads you to killing people? Not that nonsense again!

That’s the message that Ben Stein has been pushing lately, namely not just the hated “Darwinism” but science itself inevitably leads to political philosophies such as Nazi-ism and Stalinism (but especially Nazi-ism, given its emphasis on racial hygiene and eugenics), including the mass murder that resulted from them. As a result, Stein has been correctly […]

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Cancer Medicine Science

A loss is felt

As I wing my way back home from San Diego, I’ve had a bit of time to digest what I saw and learned at the AACR meeting. Overall, it was an above average but definitely not outstanding meeting, and I may discuss specifics more at a later time. One key theme that seems to be […]

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Anti-Semitism Bioethics Biology Entertainment/culture Evolution History Holocaust Intelligent design/creationism Medicine Movies Pseudoscience Science Skepticism/critical thinking World War II

A question for Ben Stein: Why are you singling out Darwin and ignoring the true inspirations for the Holocaust, Pasteur and Koch?

Nasal drone Ben Stein, as you would be hard-pressed not to know if you are a regular reader of ScienceBlogs, is hosting what looks to be a truly execrable crap-fest called Expelled!: No Intelligence Allowed. The movie basically consists of two themes: (1) Whining about “intellectual oppression” by those evil “Darwinists” directed against any valiant […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Medicine Quackery

Autism and vaccines: The story morphs

I have to hand it to Dan Olmsted. As Dr. Michael Egnor is for “intelligent design” creationism, ol’ Danny Boy is the Energizer Bunny of antivaccinationism. Tag-teaming with fellow “journalist” David Kirby, who seems able to live rather well without actually, you know, having a regular job, ex-UPI correspondent Olmsted form the not-so-dynamic duo of […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Summer school for woo

Imagine you’re a medical student in a dreaded “allopathic” medical school other than Georgetown. Imagine further that you’re finding the grind of learning science- and evidence-based medicine a bit tiresome. After all, there’s so much to learn: principles of biochemistry, physiology, anatomy (and not with acupuncture points), and neuroscience. You’re reading multiple chapters a night, […]