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Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Biology Medicine Pseudoscience

James Lyons-Weiler and Paul Thomas: Incompetently demonizing aluminum vaccine adjuvants

James Lyons-Weiler has published an analysis claiming that Paul Thomas’ “Vaccine-Friendly Plan” is safer than the current CDC-recommended vaccine schedule because contains less aluminum. Unsurprisingly, The modeling behind the analysis is risibly incompetent. Same as it ever was.

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Politics

Transmission gambit: An old antivax trope is resurrected

Recently, antivaxxers were all over social media after Tucker Carlson touted a “revelation” that the phase 3 clinical trial used to support licensure of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine didn’t examine its ability to block transmission as meaning that its inability to block transmission had been “covered up”. It wasn’t, and antivaxxers are ignoring everything we’ve learned over the last two years to make the claim that vaccines “don’t prevent transmission”.

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Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Medicine

Even COVID-19 can’t stop antivaxxers from publishing crappy “vaxxed/unvaxxed” studies

Sadly, the COVID-19 pandemic hasn’t stopped antivax “scientists” from publishing crappy antivax studies that don’t show what they claim they show, as Paul Thomas and James Lyons-Weiler’s most recent “vaxxed/unvaxxed” study shows.

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Antivaccine nonsense Clinical trials Medicine

Undermining the childhood vaccine schedule with EBM fundamentalism

“Not antivax” COVID contrarian Dr. Vinay Prasad demonstrates why skepticism is necessary and how evidence-based medicine (EBM) fundamentalism harms childhood health by inadvertently (I hope) echoing a very old antivax trope about randomized clinical trials for the childhood vaccine schedule, you know, to “rebuild confidence.”

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Politics Popular culture Pseudoscience

No one should be surprised at the number of antivax doctors in a new survey

A recent survey suggests that a disturbingly high percentage of physicians are either vaccine hesitant or actually antivaccine. Those of us who have been writing about the antivaccine movement know that this is not new, but it seems new to our colleagues who weren’t paying attention before the pandemic.