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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

More false “balance” on vaccines and autism

There’s so much horrible reporting on vaccines and the whole manufactroversy that promulgates the myth that vaccines somehow cause autism through a combination of confusing correlation with causation, bad science, quackery, and misrepresenting autism that it’s gotten harder for me to be sufficiently irritated to write about it. When I see yet another another example […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Rumors and urban legends in the antivaccinationist movement

One of the most common aspects of any good conspiracy theory is that “they” know about it but are covering it up, “they” usually being the government. Usually, the “evidence” that “they” know consists third- or fourth-hand unverifiable stories from a “friend of a friend of a friend” who, very conveniently, just so happened to […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Quackery

The mummer’s farce that was the Congressional autism hearing last week

Last Wednesday, I took note of an “old friend” and (thankfully) soon-to-be ex-Representative from Indiana’s 5th Congressional District, organized quackery’s best friend in the U.S. House of Representatives, Dan Burton. Specifically, I noted that Rep. Burton appeared to be having his one last antivaccine hurrah in the form of a hearing about the “autism epidemic” […]