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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Computers and social media Homeopathy Naturopathy News of the Weird Popular culture Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Mike Adams, a.k.a. the Health Ranger, a health scamster profiled

Anyone who’s read this blog knows my opinion of Mike Adams, the proprietor of the quack website known as NaturalNews.com. It is not favorable, to put it mildly. All you have to do to realize that is to type his name into the search box of this blog and see what comes up: Anger at […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Science Skepticism/critical thinking

A climate scientist becomes a denialist arguing vaccine pseudoscience

The human mind is amazing in its ability to compartmentalize. Many are the times when I’ve come across people who seem reasonable in every other way but who cling tightly to one form of pseudoscience or another. On the other hand, as I’ve noticed time and time again, people whose minds have a proclivity for […]

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Medicine

“Integrative medicine”: The lure of the shaman healer

Quite to my surprise, apparently I’ve become fairly well known as a critic of so-called “integrative medicine,” that which used to be called “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM) but whose name was changed because its practitioners didn’t want to be “complementary” to anything. Rather they wanted their woo to be co-equal with science-based medicine (SBM). […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Popular culture Quackery Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Alternative cancer therapies: The quest for certainty

“I don’t want knowledge. I want certainty!” –David Bowie, from Law (Earthlings on Fire) I know I’ve already said this once, but I have to say it again, but it’s been a rather stressful week on the old blog, but I hadn’t planned on writing about this particular topic again (although I will say that […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Popular culture Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

CNBC publishes an antivaccine press release from the Weston A. Price Foundation and Leslie Manookian

One of the things I’ve noticed over the last decade of covering pseudoscience and quackery from a skeptical point of view is that no pseudoscientific trope ever really dies. This is particularly true of antivaccine tropes. No matter how many times this piece or that of antivaccine misinformation is slapped down, sooner or later it […]