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

Oprah and Jenny McCarthy: A woo too far

Last week I wrote a bit about what I’ve been tempted to call Oprah’s War on Science but settled for the title of a documentary called The Oprah Effect. The reason, as I have mentioned before, is that arguably there is no single person who does more to promote pseudoscientific and dubious health practices than […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Humor Intelligent design/creationism Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Sadly, The Onion gets this one right

Want to know how Jenny McCarthy, J.B. Handley, other anti-vaccine advocates, creationists, quacks, 9/11 Truthers, and cranks and pseudoscientists of all stripes manage to be heard when they have no science, evidence, reason, logic, or facts on their side? Sadly, The Onion knows: Oh, No! It’s Making Well-Reasoned Arguments Backed With Facts! Run! At first, […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Entertainment/culture Medicine Popular culture Pseudoscience Quackery Science Skepticism/critical thinking Television

Combatting the Oprah Effect

I don’t much like Oprah Winfrey. I know, I know, it’s a huge surprise to anyone who reads this blog, but there you go. Over the last four years, I’ve had numerous reasons to be unhappy with her, mainly because, as savvy a media celebrity and businesswoman as she is, she has about as close […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine News of the Weird Quackery

Milk: It’ll do a body good! For cancer?

Here’s one of the stranger “alternative cancer cure” cases I’ve seen in a while. Basically, a man seems to think that a daily helping of his daughter’s breast milk will cure his metastatic colon cancer: When Tim Browne sits down to a bowl of corn flakes in the morning, he slurps up one unusual, and […]

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Bioethics Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Quackery Religion

Daniel Hauser, fundraising, and “health freedom”

Today is a very good day indeed. I say that because Daniel Hauser, the 13-year-old boy with Hodgkin’s lymphoma who ran away with his mother to avoid having to undergo chemotherapy ordered by a judge, who had found that his parents were engaging in medical neglect in not getting him effective treatment, and returned on […]