Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

“The Autism Myth Lives On”

It’s rare that the mainstream media gets it right about vaccines and autism, and when they do I feel obligated to point it out. Such is the case with Sam Wang’s article The Autism Myth Lives On. It’s well worth reading, even though it’s a couple of months old. (How I missed it when it […]

Categories
Biology Evolution Intelligent design/creationism Science Skepticism/critical thinking

When it comes to refuting creationist nonsense, I am but slime…

…from one of Michigan State University Professor Richard Lenski’s E. coli cultures. Lenski’s second response to the clueless “request” of the creationist idiot Andrew Schlafly to provide his raw data to him for “independent review” supporting a recent PNAS paper (more here) by him that is yet another in a line of papers by evolutionary […]

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Medicine Science

Old school versus new school in the lab

I was perusing the feeds of my fellow ScienceBloggers the other night when I came across a post by ERV that really resonated with me. In it, she expounds on the benefits of doing things “old school” in the lab, specifically with respect to having hard evidence to defend oneself if ever accused of scientific […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Quackery

Sanctioned!

Remember the case of Clifford Shoemaker, lawyer for the antivaccinationist mercury militia who tried to subpoena Kathleen Seidel under incredibly dubious legal reasoning in order to harass and intimidate her? Remember how the subpoena was quashed? One word: Sanctioned! Woo-hoo! Quoth Judge James R. Muirhead: Clifford J. Shoemaker’s action is an abuse of legal process, […]

Categories
Anti-Semitism History Holocaust Holocaust denial Pseudoscience Skepticism/critical thinking

Crank magnetism in action: Astrology, crop circles, and Holocaust denial, oh my!

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my years of delving into pseudoscience, quackery, and alternative medicine is that conspiracy theories are just like Lays potato chips; cranks can’t eat just one. No, they have to stick their hand in the bag and pull out a huge, heaping handful and snarf it all down. Believers […]