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

Help vaccinate Las Vegas!

If there’s one thing that I’ve found that’s simultaneously gratifying and somewhat infuriating over the last year or so, it’s that the skeptical movement has finally really noticed that anti-vaccination movement in a big way. Those of us who’ve been on the blogospheric front lines for the last few years have sometimes been frustrated that […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine History Hitler Zombie Humor Medicine Quackery

From a crypt in Berlin, it returns to decimate the anti-vaccine movement

SETTING: A NONDESCRIPT CLINIC IN AUSTIN, TEXAS TIME: AFTER DARK It had been a long, hard day at the clinic. The man trudged to the back of the building and plopped himself down on a large, cushy leather office chair, causing it to spin around. He was fiftyish, but still boyish in appearance, possessed of […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

The anti-vaccine movement: Is it too late for scientists to bridge the gap between evidence and fear?

Hot on the heels of yesterday’s paper in Pediatrics showing that vaccine refusal elevates the risk of pertussis in a child by nearly 23-fold, a commentary in PLoS Biology asks what can be done to combat anti-vaccine misinformation. Entitled A Broken Trust: Lessons from the Vaccine-Autism Wars, it’s an interview with a professor of medical […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Entertainment/culture Humor Medicine Quackery Television

The Jenny McCarthy Song

A loving ode to Jenny McCarthy from her good friends, Measles, Mumps, and Rubella: Genius. That’s all I can say. Thank you Brian Thompson, a.k.a. the Amateur Scientist. And to you, Jenny McCarthy, the Measles, Mumps, and Rubella offer their profound thanks for saving them from eradication in the U.S., just as they’ve offered their […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Biology Complementary and alternative medicine Entertainment/culture Intelligent design/creationism Medicine Popular culture Pseudoscience Quackery Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Melanie Phillips: Crank magnetism in action on evolution and vaccines

A while back, Mark Hoofnagle coined a term that I like very much: Crank magnetism. To boil it down to its essence, crank magnetism is the phenomenon in which a person who is a crank in one area very frequently tends to be attracted to crank ideas in other, often unrelated areas. I had noticed […]