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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Popular culture Pseudoscience

Harassment of doctors and grieving mothers: A feature, not a bug, of the antivaccine movement

Harassment of its opponents is a feature, not a bug, of the antivaccine movement, even if the victims are grieving mothers. The idea is to harass and intimidate their opponents into silence.

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Popular culture Pseudoscience

Is the misrepresentation of scientific findings by antivaxers leading to self-censorship by scientists?

Melinda Wenner Moyer published an article in The New York Times arguing that fear of how antivaxers will react to scientific findings is leading scientists to indulge in self-censorship. I’m not convinced that this is the case.

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Cancer Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Medicine Naturopathy Quackery

Selling an alternative medicine cancer cure testimonial as an “N-of-1” trial: Integrative medicine’s new propaganda technique?

If there’s one thing that proponents of “integrative medicine” (or, as it’s been called in the past, “complementary and alternative medicine,” or CAM) take great pains to emphasize whenever defending their integration of prescientific and pseudoscientific medicine into medicine, it’s that they do not recommend using “alternative medicine” instead of real medicine but in addition […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Homeopathy Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Dr. David Brownstein fought Shingrix, and Shingrix won

Dr. David Brownstein is a “holistic” family practice physician in my area. Consistent with being “holistic,” he is antivaccine to the core. That’s why he’s unhappy with the recent CDC recommendation that adults over 50 receive the new shingles vaccine. He thinks he’s found a clever argument to show it doesn’t work. Unfortunately, his argument only reveals his bias and misunderstanding.

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Bad science Medicine Popular culture Pseudoscience Quackery

Dr. Ken Walker (a.k.a. Dr. W. Gifford-Jones) plays the martyr over his antivaccine op-ed

Dr. Ken Walker (more famously known as Canadian syndicated columnist Dr. W. Gifford-Jones) wrote an antivaccine op-ed for The Toronto Sun so full of antivaccine misinformation that was retracted after a flurry of complaints and bad publicity. Now, he plays the martyr. Unfortunately for him, he does it while spewing the same sort of antivaccine misinformation for which his previous op-ed had been retracted.