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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics

A hilariously conspiratorial justification by Clifford Shoemaker for harassing a blogger

I’ve written a lot about the legal thuggery perpetrated against autism blogger Kathleen Seidel by an unethical lawyer named Clifford Shoemaker, who issued a subpoena against her based on dubious conspiratorial thinking about her supposedly being a shill for big pharma. Shoemaker, in case you didn’t know, is a lawyer who represents litigants suing vaccine […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Stupid cubed: David Kirby, RFK, Jr., and Generation Rescue use the Bailey Banks case to tag team the antivaccine counterattack against the MMR

“Just when I thought I was out… they pull me back in.” At least, that’s what Michael Corleone said in The Godfather, Part 3, and even though I’m not a mafia don, I can sort of relate to where he’s coming from, if you know what I mean. It seems that whenever I try to […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Quackery

I really admire skeptical English bloggers and commentators…

…because they blog under the shadow of the United Kingdom’s insane libel laws. Witness this travesty of a ruling on the libel case against Simon Singh by the British Chiropractic Association, as related by Jack of Kent. I first learned about the UK’s exceedingly plaintiff-friendly libel laws when, shortly after I became interested in Holocaust […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Quackery

Simon Singh appeals Judge Eady’s bogus libel ruling

Back in May many of us in the skeptical blogosphere were alarmed to learn of what British law blogger Jack of Kent termed “an astonishingly illiberal ruling” by Sir David Eady against science writer Simon Singh. Eady was the judge presiding over another bit of legal thuggery by practitioners whose feelings were hurt when Simon […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

Suppression of speech through legal intimidation, anti-vaccine edition: Barbara Loe Fisher sues Dr. Paul Offit, Amy Wallace, and Condé Nast for libel

In general, one of the biggest differences between those defending science-based medicine and those defending pseudoscience, quackery, and anti-science is that science inculcates in its adherents a culture of free and open debate. In marked contrast, those advocating pseudoscience tend to cultivate cultures of the echo chamber. Examples abound and include discussion forums devoted to […]