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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Quackery

An antivaccine Frankenstein’s monster turns on his creator

Almost everyone knows the story of Victor Frankenstein and his monster. It’s such a classic tale that has been around so long and told so many times in so many ways that it’s almost impossible for someone living in this country not to have encountered it growing up. Frankenstein’s monster is also a tale that […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Intelligent design/creationism Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

The (not so) Thinking Moms’ (D)evolution’s Declaration

One of the most inaptly named groups I’ve ever seen is called Thinking Moms’ Revolution (henceforth abbreviated as TMR). Given the reality of what TMR really is, the word “thinking” applied to TMR is, as they say, so wrong it’s not even wrong. As for a “revolution,” what TMR really represents is nothing revolutionary at […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Computers and social media Medicine Quackery

Wiki woo?

While I was away over the weekend, a reader made me aware of a new development in the world of “alternative”–excuse me, “complementary and alternative”–medicine (a.k.a. CAM). I suppose I should have seen this coming. In retrospect, given the proliferation of wikis of seemingly every shape and for seemingly every purpose, it was inevitable that […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Biology Blogging Complementary and alternative medicine Evolution Intelligent design/creationism Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Science Skepticism/critical thinking

“Germany, we have a problem…” Or: Should anything be done about two bad apples of pseudoscience on the tree of ScienceBlogs.de?

Well, it looks as though I’ve stepped into it yet one more time. Believe it or not, I hadn’t intended to stir up trouble among the ScienceBlogs collective, both English- and German-speaking. Really. Oh, I’ll admit that there are occasionally times when I actually do mean to stir up trouble. One recent example is when […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Quoth Mark “not a doctor, not a scientist” Blaxill: “Help, help, Andy Wakefield’s being repressed!”

Help! Help! I’m being repressed. Somehow, that is the image I have gotten in the three weeks since the very last shred of Andrew Wakefield’s facade of scientific respectability tumbled. As you may recall, at the end of January, the British General Medical Council found Andrew Wakefield, the man whose trial lawyer-funded, breathtakingly incompetent, and […]