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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Entertainment/culture Medicine Quackery

Help Ben Goldacre out…he’s being sued again

If I lived in the U.K., I don’t know if I could blog. After all, the U.K. has some of the most plaintiff-friendly libel laws in the world, far more so than here in the U.S., in that in a libel case it is up to the defendant to prove that what he wrote is […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Friday Woo Medicine Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Your Friday Dose of Woo: The best woo is breast woo

I realize that I’ve been neglecting my woo. Indeed, yesterday I noticed that it’s been a month and a half since I did a real Friday Dose of Woo. Of course, that particular installation of my long-running blog series (over two and a half years!) was some incredibly powerful woo. In fact, it was titanic, […]

Categories
Anti-Semitism History Holocaust Holocaust denial Politics Religion

Better late than never? The Vatican demands that a Holocaust denier recant

I guess even the Vatican responds to public pressure, if it’s intense enough. Last week, I noted an extremely disturbing story, a story that outraged me, a story that I would have found even more disturbing were I still a practicing Catholic but that I found disturbing enough even though I no longer am one. […]

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Medicine Politics

The silliest kerfuffle ever?

Lately ScienceBlogs has been “buzzing” with a story that, at the risk of needing to don an asbestos suit for the insults that may come my way, I find utterly ridiculous. Here’s the context: The Blogosphere is abuzz about an article in the LA Times regarding Second Lady Jill Biden’s preference to be acknowledged by […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Medicine

David Kirby’s “logic”: The hepatitis B vaccine may increase the risk of multiple sclerosis, so it’s obvious that vaccines cause autism

It’s really hard to take David Kirby seriously any more. Well, actually, it’s been hard to take him seriously for at nearly four years now, ever since he wrote his paean to antivaccinationists, Evidence of Harm, in which no conspiracy-mongering related to mercury as an alleged cause of autism was too out there, too ridiculous, […]