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

More false “balance” on vaccines and autism

There’s so much horrible reporting on vaccines and the whole manufactroversy that promulgates the myth that vaccines somehow cause autism through a combination of confusing correlation with causation, bad science, quackery, and misrepresenting autism that it’s gotten harder for me to be sufficiently irritated to write about it. When I see yet another another example […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Science Skepticism/critical thinking

A science section for the Huffington Post? More like a pseudoscience section! (2010 edition)

Funny how everything old is new again, isn’t it? Yes, if there’s one thing I’ve learned over nearly six years of blogging, it’s that, sooner or later, everything is recycled, and I do mean everything. At least, that was the thought going through my mind when I came across PZ’s discussion of a clueless wonder […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

How not to do “personalized medicine” to treat Alzheimer’s disease

With the aging of the population, one of the most feared potential manners by which more and more of us will leave this earth is through Alzheimer’s disease or other forms of dementia. And it is a scary thing, too. Having valued my intelligence all my life and in particular enjoying the intellectual stimulation that […]

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

They’re coming out of the woodwork

Thanks to having been up all night Thursday night and most of the night a couple of days before that working on a grant, I know I haven’t had a chance to write about the GMC’s ruling on Andrew Wakefield’s unethical conduct in conducting his “clinical research” that according to him linked the MMR vaccine […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Quackery Religion

It’s more than just Senator Tom Harkin and woo: Christian Science and faith healing in health care reform

Every so often, as the health care reform initiative spearheaded by the Obama Administration wends its way through Congress (or, more precisely, wend their ways through Congress, given that there are multiple bills coming from multiple committees in both Houses), I’ve warned about various chicanery from woo-friendly legislators trying to legitimize by legislation where they’ve […]