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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Politics

“New school” anti-(COVID-19)-vaxxers are all-in on “old school” vaccines-cause-autism antivax

Over the last month, Orac has noticed that “new school” COVID-19 antivaxxers are rediscovering old school “vaccines cause autism” pseudoscience in a huge way. Also, there’s transphobia. Lots of transphobia. WTF is going on?

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Skepticism/critical thinking

Steve Kirsch: From anti-COVID vaccine to irredeemably bonkers antivax

Tech bro turned COVID-19 misinformation superspreader and antivaxxer Steve Kirsch has now fully embraced “old school” vaccine-autism conspiracy theories, demonstrating how anti-COVID-19 vaccine antivaxxers frequently become just antivaxxers.

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Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Medicine

Vaccines and SIDS: Steve Kirsch amps up the stupid

Antivaxxers have long claimed that childhood vaccines cause sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). Now “new school” antivaxxer Steve Kirsch has resurrected this hoary old lie using the thinnest of evidence plus a lot of handwaving.

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Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Medicine

Study laundering: Retracted antivax studies resurrected in fake journals

Antivaxxers don’t like it when one of their crappy studies that they somehow managed to sneak into a decent peer-reviewed journal is deservedly retracted, as happened to Mark Skidmore’s paper that estimated that 278K people might have died from COVID-19 vaccines. Fortunately for Skidmore and others, there exist fake journals that will launder their study by republishing it so that antivaxxers can continue to claim the work has been published in a “peer-reviewed journal.”

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Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Medicine Skepticism/critical thinking

Toby Rogers knows statistics but not vaccines

Toby Rogers is an economist. He knows multivariate statistics. He doesn’t know epidemiology and pharmacovigilance. Does that stop him from fear mongering about vaccines? You know the answer!