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Complementary and alternative medicine Humor Medicine Quackery

If “alternative” medicine is okay, why not “alternative” cleaning?

With all the woo infiltrating hospitals these days, as I’ve lamented about in constructing my Academic Woo Aggregator, it was only a matter of time until these ways of thinking started to infiltrate other lines of work. Why not “alternative janitorial services” as well? After reading about it, I wonder how long before it spreads […]

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Medicine Surgery

The Chinese “Elephant Man”

This story is a couple of weeks old, but I’ve only just come across it. It reminds me that there may be some things worse than death, and this is one of them: To see the face of 32-year-old Huang Chuancai is to witness a rare genetic condition in its most terrible form. Chinese doctors […]

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

Don Imus: He never fails to deliver the stupid when it comes to vaccines and autism

I’ll give Don Imus credit for one thing. He’s predictable and consistent. He never fails to deliver the stupid when it comes to vaccines and autism. True, his wife may take the stupid to hysterically malignant levels when she decides to rant about her belief in the undead myth that mercury in vaccines was a […]

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Announcements

Come rain, come sleet, come snow (well, mostly snow right now) the Skeptics’ Circle is on its way

Winter has settled in well and good around these parts, maybe not as brutal as around P.Z.’s abode but bad enough. So what does one do on a cold, blustery day? If you’re a skeptical blogger, you could whip up an example of your best stuff and submit it to the upcoming Meeting of the […]

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

Your Friday Dose of Woo: It’s all in the shoes, or is it?

One of the favorite failings in logic and science among the woo-friendly crowd is the ever-famous one of confusing correlation with causation, also known as non causa pro causa, which means “non-cause for the cause.” Examples of this are rampant, and include the antivaccinationists who confuse correlation with vaccination and the age at which autism […]