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Autism Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Mercury and autism: Well, look at what the Geiers are up to now

Regular readers of this blog may have noticed that it’s been a while since I’ve written a substantive post on the fear mongering and bad science that are used by activists to support the claim that mercury in the thimerosal used as preservatives in vaccines is the cause of an “autism epidemic.” The closest I’ve […]

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Autism Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery

From the vaults: RFK, Jr. gets his first ever taste of Respectful Insolence™

Time flies when you’re having fun. Hard as it is to believe, it’s been a year since RFK, Jr. first posted his ridiculous conspiracy-mongering piece on Salon.com. Ever since moving to ScienceBlogs back in February, I had planned on reposting this article on the anniversary of its original appearance. Unfortunately, for some reason I misremembered […]

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

Antivaccination warriors vs. research ethics

It’s been a very interesting week for those of us who try to keep an eye on antivaccination warriors who scare mothers with claims based on either no science or bad science of dire consequences that will come from vaccinating their children. A very interesting week indeed, kind of like that old curse, “May you […]

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Medicine Science

An interesting tidbit about Mark Geier

In the light of recently discovered possible chicanery on the part of Mark Geier and his dubious IRB, I found this report by John Leavitt very interesting: My interest in inserting bacterial genes into mammalian cells stemmed from a paper published in Nature in 1971 by NIH scientists, Carl Merril, Mark Geier, and John Petricciani, […]

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Autism Bioethics Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Anti-mercury warriors descending further into the depths

Damn you, Kathleen. Every time I think that I can give the whole mercury/autism thing a rest for a while and move on to less infuriating pastures, you keep finding things that keep dragging me back to the pit of pseudoscience inhabited by Dr. Mark Geier and his son David. The first time around, Kathleen […]