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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

“Piltdown” medicine: Andrew Wakefield’s scientific fraud was worse than previously thought

Pity poor Andrew Wakefield. 2010 was a terrible year for him, and 2011 is starting out almost as bad. In February 2010, the General Medical Council in the U.K. recommended that Wakefield be stripped of his license to practice medicine in the U.K. because of scientific misconduct related to his infamous 1998 case series published […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

The Nobel disease meets DNA teleportation and homeopathy

I’m tired. Well, not exactly. I think I’m just suffering a case of what I like to call “anti-vax burnout.” It’s been a busy couple of weeks on the antivaccine front, given the new set of revelations about Andrew Wakefield, including even more detail about the nature of the scientific fraud he committed and previously […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Politics

The Supreme Court rules on Bruesewitz v. Wyeth and vaccine injury cases

Hard as it is to believe, it’s been nearly a year since I first learned that the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case regarding the legitimacy of the vaccine court. The long version can be found here, but the short version is that last March SCOTUS agreed to hear a case regarding the constitutionality […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

Another swing for the fences and a miss by the anti-vaccine movement

Knowing what you are destined to blog about on a given night three days beforehand is a two-edged sword. On the plus side, I don’t have to worry about writer’s block or lack of suitable material to use as fodder for my Insolence, Respectful and not-so-Respectful, and that’s usually a good thing. On the other […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Evolution History Holocaust denial Intelligent design/creationism Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Science Skepticism/critical thinking

The “vindication of all kooks” corollary to the principle of crank magnetism

A couple of years ago, fellow ScienceBlogger Mark Hoofnagle over at Denialism Blog coined a most excellent term to describe all manners of pseuodscience, quackery, and crankery. The term, “crank magnetism,” describes the tendency of cranks not to mind it when they see crankery in others. More specifically, it describes how cranks of one variety […]