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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Quackery

The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM): Your Tax Dollars at Work

What’s an advocate of evidence- and science-based medicine to think about the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, better known by its abbrevation NCCAM? As I’ve pointed out before, I used to be somewhat of a supporter of NCCAM. I really did, back when I was more naïve and idealistic. Indeed, as I mentioned […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Entertainment/culture Medicine Politics Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking Television

Keith Olbermann: Played for a fool by the antivaccine movement

Stick a fork in Keith Olbermann. He’s done. He has now officially degenerated into a liberal version of Rush Limbaugh, except that Rush Limbaugh is occasionally funny. Maybe he’s more like Sean Hannity, particularly in his apparent dedication to the truth, or, rather, lack thereof. Hannity detests liberals and will immediately attack on the slightest […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Entertainment/culture Medicine Politics Popular culture Quackery

Why am I not surprised? It looks as though Andrew Wakefield probably falsified his data

Pity Andrew Wakefield. Actually, on second thought, Wakefield deserves no pity. After all, he is the man who almost single-handedly launched the scare over the MMR vaccine in Britain when he published his infamous Lancet paper in 1998 in which he claimed to have linked the MMR vaccine to regressive autism and inflammation of the […]

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Anti-Semitism History Holocaust Holocaust denial Politics Religion

Better late than never? The Vatican demands that a Holocaust denier recant

I guess even the Vatican responds to public pressure, if it’s intense enough. Last week, I noted an extremely disturbing story, a story that outraged me, a story that I would have found even more disturbing were I still a practicing Catholic but that I found disturbing enough even though I no longer am one. […]

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Medicine Politics

The silliest kerfuffle ever?

Lately ScienceBlogs has been “buzzing” with a story that, at the risk of needing to don an asbestos suit for the insults that may come my way, I find utterly ridiculous. Here’s the context: The Blogosphere is abuzz about an article in the LA Times regarding Second Lady Jill Biden’s preference to be acknowledged by […]