Category: Medicine

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Evolution Intelligent design/creationism Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

What makes a physician become an antivaxer?

Dr. Douglas Mackenzie, represented by Richard Jaffe
"Whatchoo talkin' about, Willis?" Yes, before his lawsuit, Dr. Mackenzie appeared in VAXXED videos.

Even though they should know better based on their training, too many physicians embrace the dark side and become antivaccine. How does this happen? What personality traits common among physicians can facilitate a descent into pseudoscience?

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Quoth an antivaxer: Vaccines are making dogs autistic!

I love dogs and puppies; so I used this post as an excuse to post a picture of a cute puppy running.

To antivaxers, it’s always the vaccines. Now they’re claiming vaccines cause autism in dogs. The problem, of course, is that vaccines don’t cause autism in humans, and labeling dog behavior as “autistic” is problematic in the extreme.

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

A “teachable moment”: Guggie Daly goes full Orwellian to promote antivaccine beliefs

Antivaxer Guggie Daly thinks that manipulating and twisting speech will help spread her antivaccine message. She could be right, but fortunately she's just bad at it.

Antivaxer Guggie Daly thinks that manipulating and twisting speech will help spread her antivaccine message. She could be right, but fortunately for prescience advocates she’s just really bad at it.

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

SB 277 works. Period. No wonder antivaxers hate it.

Vaccine uptake in California, pre- and post-SB 277. Eat it, antivaxers.

The numbers are in. SB 277, the new California law banning nonmedical exemptions, works. Vaccine uptake is up, and personal belief exemptions are down dramatically.

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Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Medicine Naturopathy Politics Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Death by intravenous “turmeric”: Naturopaths circle the wagons and the chair of the Naturopathic Medical Committee of California looks for dirt on conventional medicine

A patient is dead because a naturopath dosed her with intravenous curcumin. Instead of learning from the debacle, naturopaths circle the wagon, and the chair of the Naturopathic Medicine Committee for the State of California Department of Consumer Affairs shows his intent to try to exonerate the naturopath responsible.