David Gorski (Orac)

David Gorski is an American surgical oncologist, MD/PhD, who specializes in breast cancer surgery at the Karmanos Cancer Institute in Detroit, an NCI-designated cancer center. He holds an MD from the University of Michigan (1988) and a PhD in Cellular Physiology from Case Western Reserve University (1994), and is a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons. He is a Professor of Surgery at Wayne State University School of Medicine. Since 2008, he has been the managing editor of Science-Based Medicine, where he writes under his own name. Simultaneously, he has maintained the Respectful Insolence blog since 2004 under the pseudonym Orac, which has become one of the most detailed and technically rigorous long-running skeptical blogs on medicine and pseudoscience.

Gorski is an outspoken critic of alternative medicine, the anti-vaccine movement, and what he calls "integrative medicine" — the incorporation of poorly evidence-based treatments into conventional clinical settings. His writing at Science-Based Medicine and Respectful Insolence is notable for its technical depth: as a working research scientist and surgeon, he engages with the primary literature and provides detailed mechanistic analyses of why specific alternative therapies lack plausibility or evidence. His multi-year investigation and commentary on Stanislaw Burzynski's antineoplaston cancer treatments is one of the most comprehensive publicly available critical analyses of a major alternative cancer fraud.

What distinguishes Gorski's approach is the combination of active clinical practice, laboratory research at a major cancer center, and sustained commitment to public science communication. He deliberately maintains his clinical and research roles rather than transitioning to full-time media, which he argues is necessary for maintaining the credibility and currency of the analysis he provides.