Is there a balanced alternative to science?

If you’re not regularly listening to The Infinite Monkey Cage, a BBC Radio 4 show about science hosted by Robin Ince and Brian Cox, then you are an execrable excuse for a human specimen and I despise every molecule in your worthless body. Sorry. Bit harsh. I don’t mean that. But you should listen to [...]

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The Burzynski Clinic speaks up

The Burzynski Clinic have issued a press release, presumably in response to the recent unflattering media attention they’ve been getting. The first thing I notice about this official statement is that the clinic’s motto on their letterhead reads: “First, Do Not [sic] Harm!”. Which is different from the one on their website, which uses the [...]

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Help us, corporations – you’re our only hope

Here’s some numbers in graph form. Don’t worry, it’s not exactly overwhelming and convoluted, as economic graphs go.     Here’s what the above wiggly lines mean: In the US, corporate profits after tax are currently a little over 10% of GDP. This is higher than they’ve been in fifty years. Workers’ wages and salaries [...]

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Goal-oriented Skeptics

If you’re someone who engages in the skeptical movement, what are the goals you hope to achieve in doing so? I’ve been slack with my blogging lately, and I’ve had this post by Daniel Loxton bookmarked for so long that I’ve forgotten most of what I wanted to say about it. But I know I [...]

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The Burzynski Continuation

Remember that time some legitimate cancer researchers threatened to sue a 17-year-old kid who questioned the scientific credibility of their medical claims? No, me neither. But, after Rhys Morgan posted to his blog about the Burzynski Clinic a couple of months ago, he started getting bizarre, abusive, bullying, creepy, and borderline illiterate correspondence from the [...]

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Obama The Militant Atheist

There’s a popular line about how militant Muslims fly planes into buildings, militant Christians murder doctors who provide abortions, and militant atheists write books. It succinctly makes the point about the common double-standard in how people with different religious ideas are perceived. So long as you have some kind of faith, you can shout about [...]

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Mike Adams’s Unlikely Future

Health Ranger Mike Adams is still alternately hilarious and head-bangingly infuriating in his paranoid lunacy. One of the latest articles on NaturalNews is littered with scary stories about “science” and “cures” and “vaccines” and “Terminators”. Yes, those are just some of the scare quotes available on this one page, making both mundane technology and vapid [...]

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Evidence? Burzynski don’t need no stinkin’ evidence

A man named Dr Burzynski believes he can treat cancer through an entirely new form of therapy. I don’t know if this is true, but other people have been trying to find out. Orac has previously reported on some of the reasons why most physicians doubt that Burzynski’s method is as effective as he claims. [...]

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Chromosome fusion

I learned a fantastically cool thing about biology recently. Just about everything living organism in the known universe has DNA in it, a sort of code made up of strings of tiny molecules. DNA forms into building blocks called genes, and it’s these genes which determine how the living organism in question – whether that’s [...]

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Robert Ludlum’s “The Gelato Excommunication”

Because I should talk about this, but I’m getting tired of the -gate snowclone. So there’s been yet another big gathering of sciencey types which I’m disappointed not to be attending. This one’s called Skepticon. And although I’m sure there were lots of exciting conversations and presentations that went on there, most of the gossip [...]

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