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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine

Why, Medscape, why? Or: Gardasil is hunky-dory except when antivaccinationists say it’s not.

THWOMP! THWOMP! THWOMP! TWHOMP! THWOMP! TWHOMP! That’s the sound of me hitting my head against the table. Hard. What provoked this reaction in me is Medscape, specifically an article that my blog bud PalMD turned me on to. That the article, entitled HPV Vaccine Deemed Safe and Effective, Despite Reports of Adverse Events, seems to […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

When “gut feelings” about science attack, or: Oh, no! Histidine and polysorbate-80 are going to destroy our girls!

Some people should keep their “gut feelings” to themselves. You know the type: People who have no knowledge about a topic or, even worse, just enough knowledge to sound as if they have a clue about it to people who don’t have a clue but who are at the same time easily spotted as utterly […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

Is there an antivaccinationist on ScienceBlogs.de? Help me figure it out, my German-speaking readers!

I don’t read ScienceBlogs.de for the simple reason that I don’t understand German beyond a few words and phrases. Consequently, I don’t know what our German counterparts are up to. However, a reader sent me a link that gives me reason to be very concerned about at least one of the blogs in the German […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Biology Blogging Complementary and alternative medicine Evolution Intelligent design/creationism Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Science Skepticism/critical thinking

“Germany, we have a problem…” Or: Should anything be done about two bad apples of pseudoscience on the tree of ScienceBlogs.de?

Well, it looks as though I’ve stepped into it yet one more time. Believe it or not, I hadn’t intended to stir up trouble among the ScienceBlogs collective, both English- and German-speaking. Really. Oh, I’ll admit that there are occasionally times when I actually do mean to stir up trouble. One recent example is when […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Entertainment/culture Medicine Popular culture Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking Television

Oprah and Jenny McCarthy: A woo too far

Last week I wrote a bit about what I’ve been tempted to call Oprah’s War on Science but settled for the title of a documentary called The Oprah Effect. The reason, as I have mentioned before, is that arguably there is no single person who does more to promote pseudoscientific and dubious health practices than […]