Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

A commenter takes me to task for being mean to Andrew Wakefield

It’s been pointed out to me that our old pal David Kirby, perhaps the cleverest antivaccine propagandist out there, is back at (where else?) The Huffington Post (a.k.a. HuffPo) asking why The Autism-Vaccine Debate: Why It Won’t Go Away (short answer: because opportunists like Kirby have teamed with believers in pseudoscience to keep fanning the […]

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

A proposal: An anti-Schopenhauer response to anti-vaccine cranks

There’s a quote attributed to philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer that is much beloved of cranks: All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident. I hate this quote with a bloody passion. Actually, that’s not quite true. Rather, I find it rather amusing […]

Categories
Bioethics Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Another teen endangered by “alternative medicine,” part 2

Judge Orders Surgery For Teen Wrestler: MyFoxPHILLY.com I have to be honest here. I don’t know for sure what I think of the latest developments in the Mazeratti Mitchell case. As you may recall from a couple of days ago, Mazeratti Mitchell is a 16 year old wrestler in Philadelphia who suffered a spinal cord […]

Categories
Medicine Religion Skepticism/critical thinking

Dogma versus science

It’s been a crazy week that’s reaching a crescendo today and tomorrow, so much so that, unlike yesterday, when I said I’d only be brief and ended up blathering on for close to 2,000 words (Mike Adams has that effect on me, particularly when he’s at his most un-self-aware), today I really will be brief […]

Categories
Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

AOL buys The Huffington Post and a quack sees an opportunity

Things are pretty hairy this week, what with a couple of grant deadlines fast approaching, not to mention a rather important site visit at my institution later this week. As a result, I had been intending to post a “rerun” today, but then I saw something that just cracked me up so much that I […]