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Bioethics Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

The justification for NCCAM: “What can be done to generate a better placebo?”

It’s probably an understatement to say that I’ve been critical of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM). Indeed, I consider it not only to be a boondoggle that wastes the taxpayers’ money funding pseudoscience, but a key promoter of quackery. Worse, its promotion of highly implausible (one might even say magical) modalities […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

The beginning of a very, very bad year for antivaccinationists

One thing that’s become apparent to me so far in 2009 is that, while 2008 was the year of the antivaccinationist, 2009 is already shaping up to be a very bad year for antivaccinationists. A very bad year indeed, and this is a very, very good thing–if it can be sustained. But first, let’s take […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Entertainment/culture Medicine Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking Television

Brian Deer responds to Keith Olbermann

Last night, I lambasted Countdown host Keith Olbermann for having been played by the antivaccine movement and having unjustly slimed British journalist Brian Deer. Clearly, Olbermann was so blinded by his hatred of Rupert Murdoch that all chief apologist for the antivaccine movement, former freelance journalist David Kirby, had to do was mention that The […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Entertainment/culture Medicine Politics Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking Television

Keith Olbermann: Played for a fool by the antivaccine movement

Stick a fork in Keith Olbermann. He’s done. He has now officially degenerated into a liberal version of Rush Limbaugh, except that Rush Limbaugh is occasionally funny. Maybe he’s more like Sean Hannity, particularly in his apparent dedication to the truth, or, rather, lack thereof. Hannity detests liberals and will immediately attack on the slightest […]

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Anti-Semitism Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine History Holocaust Holocaust denial Intelligent design/creationism Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Science Skepticism/critical thinking World War II

Bishop Richard Williamson, Holocaust denial, and the problem of “recantation” by cranks

Because of the fallout from the revelation by Brian Deer that very likely Andrew Wakefield, hero of the antivaccine movement but, alas for his worshipers, one of the most dishonest and incompetent scientists who ever lived, had almost certainly falsified data for his infamous 1998 Lancet paper that launched a decade-long anti-MMR hysteria that shows […]