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Antivaccine nonsense Clinical trials Medicine

Better late than never: The Dunning-Kruger effect meets an incompetent anti-vaccine “analysis”

It never ceases to amaze me just how ignorant of very basic principles of science anti-vaccine activists often are. I mean, seriously. Every time they try to post something, whether they know it or not, they end up making themselves look so very, very stupid–or at least ignorant. The Dunning-Kruger effect takes over, and people […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Medicine

The mercury zombie rises again…this time, in the grandchildren of Pink disease (infantile acrodynia) sufferers

Here we go again. Starting sometime in 2007, back when the idea that mercury in vaccines was the cause of the “autism epidemic” of the late 1990s and into the new century, I started referring to the “mercury/autism” hypothesis as being dead, dead, dead, as in pining for the fjords dead. Then, depending on what […]

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Blogging Complementary and alternative medicine Evolution Medicine Science

On teaching the controversy in medicine

Dr. Kevin Pho responded to a recent post by Orac criticizing a post on KevinMD that was overly credulous about alternative medicine. His response was…disappointing. Since he seems to want to teach the controversy, I thought: If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. And then I came up with some ideas for other controversies to “teach.”

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Medicine Quackery

The resurrection of David Kirby as an anti-vaccine propagandist

Four days later, I still can’t figure it out. I really can’t. Remember the other day when I said I was debating whether or not to respond to the latest excretion from one of the first hangers-on of the anti-vaccine movement I ever encountered after I started blogging. I’m referring, of course, to freelance journalist […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

The annals of “I’m not anti-vaccine,” part 4 (End of 2010 edition)

Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here. Part 3 is here. I realize I say these things again and again and again, but they bear repeating because together they are a message that needs to be spread in as clear and unambiguous a form as possible. First, whenever you hear someone say, “I’m not […]