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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Pseudoscience Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Are one person’s iconoclastic views another person’s denialism?

I’ve had a lot of fun thus far this week expressing more than a bit of schadenfreude over Andrew Wakefield’s being ignominiously stripped of his medical license in the U.K. by the General Medical Council, not to mention pointing out the quackfest that is Autism One, I feel the need for a brief break from […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Jenny McCarthy drives the stupidity to ever higher levels on–where else?–The Huffington Post

Way back on May 25, 2005, I first noticed something about a certain political group blog. It was something unsavory, something vile, something pseudoscientific. It was the fetid stench of quackery, but not just any quackery. It was anti-vaccine quackery, and the blog was Arianna Huffington’s Huffington Post, where a mere 16 days after its […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Evolution History Holocaust denial Intelligent design/creationism Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Science Skepticism/critical thinking

The “vindication of all kooks” corollary to the principle of crank magnetism

A couple of years ago, fellow ScienceBlogger Mark Hoofnagle over at Denialism Blog coined a most excellent term to describe all manners of pseuodscience, quackery, and crankery. The term, “crank magnetism,” describes the tendency of cranks not to mind it when they see crankery in others. More specifically, it describes how cranks of one variety […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Entertainment/culture Medicine Popular culture Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking Television

Blogging Suzanne Somers Knockout, part 1: How cancer testimonials mislead

Be afraid. Be very, very afraid. After a prolonged wait, it’s finally here: Yes, my promotional copy of Suzanne Somers new book Knockout: Interviews with Doctors Who Are Curing Cancer–And How to Prevent Getting It in the First Place. (The Dalek was included because, well, I was just feeling perverse when I took this picture.) […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Science Surgery

Some monkey business in autism research, 2009 edition

As you may have noticed, I’ve fallen into a groove (or, depending on your point of view, a rut) writing about anti-vaccine lunacy. The reason is simple. While I was busy going nuts over Bill Maher’s receiving the Richard Dawkins Award, the anti-vaccine movement has been busy, and there are some things I need to […]