Late last week, a crank I hadn’t heard from in a while showed up in my comments. I’m referring to DaveScot, who normally was known for promoting anti-evolution rhetoric in the service of the pseudoscience known as “intelligent design” creationism. This is what he said: Hi Orac, terrasig suggested you do a followup article on […]
Category: Medicine
“I don’t want knowledge. I want certainty!” –David Bowie, from Law (Earthlings on Fire) If there’s one universal trait among humans, it seems to be an unquenchable thirst for certainty. This should come as no surprise to those committed to science and rational thinking because there is a profound conflict between our human desire for […]
I’ve frequently referred to Age of Autism as the “anti-vaccine” crank propaganda blog and Generation Rescue, the organization that primarily runs it, a an anti-vaccine propaganda organization. Although longtime readers know exactly why I say such things, newbies might not. That’s why I consider it instructive to take note of this observation by reader Todd […]
One of the biggest examples of either self-delusion or lying that emanates from the anti-vaccine movement is the oh-so-pious and indignant denials that inevitably follow from its members and leaders whenever someone like me has the temerity to point out that they are, in fact, anti-vaccine. The disingenuously angry denials usually take a form something […]
There are few things more dangerous than a reporter with no understanding of science who, though the arrogance of ignorance, somehow comes to think that he has found the “next big story.” We’ve seen it before in various incarnations. One of the first such reporters to fall down the rabbithole of vaccine pseudoscience, thinking he […]
