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Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Medicine

Deluded tech bro Steve Kirsch claims COVID vaccines have killed 3.5X more people than COVID-19

I thought that Prof. Skidmore’s survey, from which he extrapolated an estimate of 278K killed by COVID-19 vaccines was the worst survey ever. I was wrong. Steve Kirsch has Skidmore beat by a country mile.

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Antivaccine nonsense Clinical trials Medicine

How EBM fundamentalism was weaponized against public health in 2023

Evidence-based medicine (EBM) has been a very useful paradigm for assessing evidence in medicine. However, like any other framework, it can be misused, particularly when fundamentalist EBM methodolatry leads to its inappropriate application to questions for which it is ill-suited, a misuse that has been weaponized against public health during the pandemic.

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Politics Pseudoscience Quackery

Dr. Richard Amerling of AAPS goes full Godwin on COVID-19

Dr. Richard Amerling of the medical John Birch Society known as AAPS thinks medicine is being “Nazified,” because of course he does.

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Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Medicine Skepticism/critical thinking

Norman Fenton: “It’s not p-hacking if you don’t use p-values.”

Defending an awful paper on COVID-19 vaccine adverse events, Prof. Norman Fenton claims that it can’t be p-hacking if you don’t use p-values. Hilarity ensues.

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Politics Science

NIH grant funding decisions: Reality vs. antivax conspiracies

Earlier this month, the United States National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced a plan to decrease the problem of reputational bias in grant funding. I couldn’t help but contrast how hard the NIH tries to use the most rigorous scientific criteria to decide whose grants to fund with the conspiracy theory that Anthony Fauci personally doles out NIH dollars like a mob boss to scientists who support him.