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Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Medicine Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Tom Chivers and “reasonable” apologia for science denial

Tom Chivers takes Lee McIntyre to task over his book How to Talk to a Science Denier. In the process he shows himself to be a crappy Bayesian and a “reasonable” apologist for science denial.

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Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Computers and social media Medicine Popular culture Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

The FSMB against physicians promoting COVID-19 misinformation

The Federation of State Medical Boards issued a statement that doctors spreading COVID-19 misinformation should be disciplined. It’s toothless, of course, as evidenced by the rarity of a state medical board taking action against such doctors.

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Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Medicine Politics Popular culture

After FDA approval of Comirnaty, antivaxxers claim it’s still “experimental”

On Monday the FDA granted full approval to Comirnaty, the COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer and BioNTech. By Tuesday, antivaxxers had a propaganda line that the vaccine is still “experimental.”

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Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Medicine

Geert Vanden Bossche is back and still blaming vaccines for COVID-19 variants

Geert Vanden Bossche is back, and this time he’s blaming COVID-19 vaccines for driving the evolution of more dangerous “escape variants” of SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes the disease, that are capable of evading vaccine-induced immunity. As antivaxxers making this argument always do, unfortunately, he ignores the much larger problem in which free circulation of the virus is a far more powerful driver of evolution than the relatively small proportion of the world population that has as yet been vaccinated.

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Bad science Computers and social media Medicine Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Ivermectin is the new hydroxychloroquine, take 5: But it won the Nobel Prize!

Ivermectin continues to be the new hydroxychloroquine, an unproven repurposed drug promoted to treat COVID-19. Now the advocates are pointing to the history of the drug’s developers being awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine, as though that has anything to do with its effectiveness against COVID-19.