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Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Popular culture Quackery

The central conspiracy theory of the antivaccine movement

Occasionally, there are issues that come to my attention that need more than just one blog post to cover. One such issue popped up last week, and it’s one that’s kept you all very engaged, with the comment count on the original post rapidly approaching 200. I’m referring, of course, to the alleged CDC “whistleblower” […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Uncategorized

Thanks again, antivaccine loons

I’m a bit torn today. On the one hand, it makes me cringe when pundits write inflammatory articles blaming Jenny McCarthy for measles outbreaks. Yes, I know that I once did the same thing myself, but, as much as antivaccinationists dislike me, I’ve actually toned it down a bit when it comes to that particular […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine History Holocaust denial Medicine Skepticism/critical thinking

How “they” view “us” (2014 edition)

A week ago or so, I was perusing my Google Alerts, along with various blogs and news websites, looking for something to blog about, when I noticed a disturbance in the pseudoscience Force. It’s a phenomenon I’ve noticed many times before from a wide variety of cranks and quacks, but it all boils down to […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Jenny McCarthy says she thinks in shades of gray about vaccines, but antivaccine is as antivaccine does

Never look a blogging gift horse in the mouth, I always say. Well, sort of. It just figures that I could only do two posts that weren’t about vaccines before circling back around to the topic of the antivaccine movement. For that, I have Jenny McCarthy to thank. McCarthy, as anyone who pays attention to […]

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Anti-Semitism Antivaccine nonsense Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Conspiracy theories: The dark heart of alternative medicine

If there’s one thing a budding skeptic quickly learns is that at the core of any good woo almost invariably lurks at least one conspiracy theory. At the risk of flirting a little too close to Godwin territory, this simple fact about pseudoscience, pseudohistory, and other non-evidence-based belief systems was first driven home to me […]