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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Bad science Medicine Popular culture Television

Bill Maher: Antivax transphobe or transphobic antivaxxer? You be the judge!

Last Friday, Bill Maher went full transphobe, repurposing old antivax trope commonly used to deny a predominantly genetic component to autism and claim vaccine causation in order to mock the idea that there is a biological basis to being transgender and claim its prevalence is increasing now because it’s “trendy.”

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Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Clinical trials Medicine

Update: An antivax preprint is now antivax propaganda disguised as a peer-reviewed publication in…Vaccine!

In order portray COVID-19 vaccines as dangerous, Peter Doshi has now managed to get poorly designed and performed “reanalyses” of the clinical trial data used by the FDA to grant emergency use approval of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines published in two reputable journals, The BMJ and Vaccine? What happened?

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Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Medicine Skepticism/critical thinking

Neil deGrasse Tyson demonstrates why debating cranks is a horrible idea

Astrophysicist and famed science communicator Neil deGrasse Tyson appeared on The Highwire, an antivax video podcast, to “debate” its host, antivax propagandist Del Bigtree. This incident demonstrates quite well why it is almost never a good idea for a scientist to agree to “debate” science deniers.

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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 Medicine Pseudoscience

SIDS, SADS, death and destruction: Antivaxxers resurrect an old lie to bolster a new lie

With antivaxxers blaming sudden adult death syndrome (SADS) on COVID-19 vaccines, of course, they’re citing SIDS now as being caused by MMR.