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Announcements Skepticism/critical thinking

The 110th Meeting of the Skeptics’ Circle: At the Ferret’s Cage

As you may recall, the last meeting of the Skeptics’ Circle never came to pass due to the illness of the host. That was to be the 110th Skeptics’ Circle. Given that I had somehow screwed up and used the same number twice, though, it all works out if I simply label this Skeptics’ Circle […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Medicine

Discover: Why Does the Vaccine/Autism Controversy Live On?

Unfortunately, Orac has been feeling a bit under the weather since last night–so much so that he actually did something he rarely does and stayed home from work. But enough with the third person schtick. If I feel better later, maybe I’ll post something. Hopefully I’ll be back to 100% tonight and can produce the […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

The hypocrisy of anti-vaccine activists

If there’s one thing about the anti-vaccine movement in general and one of its chief mouthpieces for propaganda, the Age of Autism blog, in particular, it’s rank hypocrisy. One of the key tenets of anti-vaccine ideology is an unrelenting distrust of big pharma. While that in and of itself would not be entirely unreasonable, given […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Biology Complementary and alternative medicine Entertainment/culture Intelligent design/creationism Medicine Popular culture Pseudoscience Quackery Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Melanie Phillips: Crank magnetism in action on evolution and vaccines

A while back, Mark Hoofnagle coined a term that I like very much: Crank magnetism. To boil it down to its essence, crank magnetism is the phenomenon in which a person who is a crank in one area very frequently tends to be attracted to crank ideas in other, often unrelated areas. I had noticed […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Entertainment/culture Medicine Politics Quackery

Whoa. Could it be? An actual science-based article at The Huffington Post?

Pinch me. I must be dreaming. I say that because I actually see an article in The Huffington Post in which the blogger, Jacob Dickerman, actually correctly describes why homeopathy is quackery! For instance: Homeopaths will tell us that water has a memory. That it vibrates in a certain way and thus knows exactly what […]