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Bioethics Biology Medicine Pseudoscience Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Answering “scientific” arguments of animal rights extremists

I spent a lot of time writing about animal rights extremists who have threatened to harass the children of an investigator whom they view as a “vivisector” and how they fetishize the very violence they decry. Unfortunately, I was disappointed to see that a fellow ScienceBlogger, namely Eric Michael Johnson of The Primate Diaries, appears […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Entertainment/culture Medicine Quackery Television

Has Dr. Oz finally crossed the Woobicon?

I’ve had it with Dr. Oz. Although I haven’t seen his show today (for one thing, I work for a living; for another thing, even if I had today off I wouldn’t waste it watching Dr. Oz’s show), readers have informed me that yesterday, on March 1, 2010, Dr. Oz threw away whatever shred of […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Quackery

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. on Poul Thorsen: The fine art of distraction from inconvenient facts

My first big splash in the blogosphere will have occurred five years ago in June, when I first discovered the utter wingnuttery that is Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. It was then that I wrote a little bit of that not-so-Respectful Insolence that you’ve come to know and love entitled Salon.com flushes its credibility down the […]

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

“Censorship.” You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

It’s rare that I encounter a bit of nonsense that allows me to deploy two of my favorite rhetorical devices. First, it lets me pull out one of my favorite clips from one of my favorite movies, in which the immortal line, “Help! Help! I’m being repressed!” was first uttered. Second, it lets me repeat […]

Categories
Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Another example of why I fear for the future of medicine

It’s been a while since I wrote about this topic, but I fear for the future of medicine. Regular readers know what I’m talking about. The infiltration of various unscientific, pseudoscientific, and even anti-scientific “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM) modalities into academic medicine seems increasingly to be endangering science-based medicine. Worse, this infiltration of quackery […]