Categories
Announcements Medicine Skepticism/critical thinking

R.I.P. SkepDoc

Orac is greatly saddened to announce that Dr. Harriet Hall, a.k.a. The SkepDoc, passed away unexpectedly on Wednesday night.

Categories
Bad science Medicine Popular culture

A bogus statistic about medical errors rears its ugly head in STAT

The claim that medical errors are the third leading cause of death in the US is one of those slasher statistics that just won’t die. This time around STAT News gave space to Michael Saks and Stephan Landsman to parrot that claim credulously in the service of selling their book.

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Medicine

Bell’s palsy, syncope, and death: The impending antivax tsunami of fake COVID-19 vaccine “adverse reactions”

Reports of Bell’s palsy and syncopy after vaccination with RNA-based COVID-19 vaccines remind us how antivaxxers will weaponize anything bad happening after vaccination. Sadly, I predict an impending tsunami of confusing correlation with causation.

Categories
Medicine Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

The “only 6%” gambit: The latest viral COVID-19 disinformation

While Orac’s been away, there’s arisen a new bit of COVID-19 disinformation that deceptively claims that “only 6%” of the deaths attributed to COVID-19 were really due to coronavirus. It turns out that this is QAnon disinformation.

Categories
Medicine Personal Tales from the helicopter

Tales from the Helicopter: A really crappy way to start the week

There’s a little known aspect of Orac’s history that hasn’t been told for 11 years. Back in the early 1990s, when he was taking a “break” from residency to do his PhD work, he moonlighted as a helicopter flight physician. Here is one of his Tales from the Helicopter.

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