Coma man: Dr. Steven Laureys still just doesn't get it
The day before the Thanksgiving holiday, I wrote about a serious contender for the worst medical reporting of the year, if not the decade, specifically how credulous reporters had swarmed all over the case of a Belgian man named Rom Houben. If you don't remember or haven't heard about the details, feel free to peruse the link I just cited, but I'll give you the brief rundown. Basically, Rom Houben is an incredibly unfortunate man who was involved in a motor vehicle crash 23 years ago at age 23. As a result, he suffered a severe head injury and was diagnosed as being in a persistent veget

Your Friday Dose of Woo: The physics of homeopathy and "nanocrystalloids"
I happen to be fortunate enough this year to have taken the Friday after Thanksgiving off, and it is a very good thing indeed. However, this morning, having indulged in the American tradition of stuffing myself full of turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and various other most excellent and hearty foods, all accompanied by some hearty ale. What that means is that I'm still suffering some of the after effects of food coma. What that further means for the blog is that I don't feel up to tackling something that will require me to exercise my neurons too much. So, in my food-induced haze, I asked myself: What topic would be light-hearted but yet not require too much intellectual firepower to t

Happy Thanksgiving
It's Thanksgiving here in the States; so I plan on taking the day off from blogging that I might partake of the American custom of stuffing myself to the point of unconsciousness while hanging out with my family. In the meantime, bow before the genius of the Muppets, as they perform one of my favorite songs of all time: I thought it appropriate for the holiday, given its beginning. Read the comments on this post...

How to respond to annoying reviewers...
You know, I have three manuscripts in the hopper with two of them having recently been returned to me with reviewers' comments. Frustratingly, one of these is a manuscript that I've been trying to get published for nearly a year now. Given that I appear to have some work to do over the long holiday weekend coming up in order to answer reviewer criticisms and get the manuscripts ready for resubmission (you know what I'll be doing either Friday or Saturday--and it won't be shopping), I truly appreciate this bit of advice on how to deal with the wayward reviewer who doesn't appreciate the importance of my work, sent my way by

Another contender for the worst reporting ever: "Coma man"
Remember how I nominated a truly execrable local news report about Desiree Jennings as a serious contender for the worst reporting of the year, perhaps even of the decade? It had everything, and I seriously doubted that anything would challenge it for credulous supremacy any time soon. How wrong I was. Check out this video: Then read these stories: 'I screamed, but there was nothing to hear': Man trapped