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Blogging Humor Medicine Skepticism/critical thinking

I feel so honored

Sometimes there are things that happen when blogging. You get accolades from unexpected sources, little ego boosts that make it all worthwhile. Such a thing happened yesterday, on the basis of my little blurb mentioning Skeptico’s takedown of Hank Barnes’s misuse of logical fallacies. The reaction, as reflected in the comments in Hank’s blog, was quite hilarious. One reader whined:

Whenever somebody claims to be debunking something, it always means that somebody revealed an uncomfortable truth and now they’ve got to stuff it back in the bottle.

Well no, actually, the only thing “uncomfortable” about Hank’s abuse of logical fallacies was just how badly he screwed them up.

For more amusement, Hank himself called Skeptico a “humorless pedant.” But I bagged the real honor, as undeserving as I was of it, given that Skeptico did the real heavy lifting here.

(See below the fold for why.)

Buried in a standard rant about us nasty and mean skeptics, I was called “low rent riff-raff” and “an incredibly conformist Libertarian” by ace HIV “dissident” Celia Farber herself!

It was five minutes before I could wipe the silly smile off my face after reading that.

You know, it’s little things like that make my humble efforts to bring the scientific method and critical thinking to the masses through my blogging worthwhile.

By Orac

Orac is the nom de blog of a humble surgeon/scientist who has an ego just big enough to delude himself that someone, somewhere might actually give a rodent's posterior about his copious verbal meanderings, but just barely small enough to admit to himself that few probably will. That surgeon is otherwise known as David Gorski.

That this particular surgeon has chosen his nom de blog based on a rather cranky and arrogant computer shaped like a clear box of blinking lights that he originally encountered when he became a fan of a 35 year old British SF television show whose special effects were renowned for their BBC/Doctor Who-style low budget look, but whose stories nonetheless resulted in some of the best, most innovative science fiction ever televised, should tell you nearly all that you need to know about Orac. (That, and the length of the preceding sentence.)

DISCLAIMER:: The various written meanderings here are the opinions of Orac and Orac alone, written on his own time. They should never be construed as representing the opinions of any other person or entity, especially Orac's cancer center, department of surgery, medical school, or university. Also note that Orac is nonpartisan; he is more than willing to criticize the statements of anyone, regardless of of political leanings, if that anyone advocates pseudoscience or quackery. Finally, medical commentary is not to be construed in any way as medical advice.

To contact Orac: [email protected]

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