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Anti-Semitism Antivaccine nonsense Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Conspiracy theories: The dark heart of alternative medicine

If there’s one thing a budding skeptic quickly learns is that at the core of any good woo almost invariably lurks at least one conspiracy theory. At the risk of flirting a little too close to Godwin territory, this simple fact about pseudoscience, pseudohistory, and other non-evidence-based belief systems was first driven home to me […]

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Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Popular culture Quackery

After all this time, Dr. Bob Sears finally tips his hand on vaccines, part IV

As hard as it is to believe, there was once a time when I (sort of) gave “Dr. Bob” Sears the benefit of the doubt. You remember Dr. Bob, don’t you? Son of the famous pediatrician Dr. William Sears, who was best known for his “Sears Parenting Library” and is a not infrequent guest on […]

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Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Release the Kraken! (I mean antivaccine “Thinkers.”)

Oh, dear. I didn’t think I’d be writing about that wretched hive of Dunning-Kruger scum and quackery, the most inaptly named website and blog of all time, The Thinking Moms’ Revolution (TMR), after having written about it just earlier this week. When last we visited this klatsch of smugly arrogant moms, one of them was […]

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Medicine Science Skepticism/critical thinking

On undisclosed conflicts of interest in medicine, science, and skepticism

I’ve written about conflicts of interest (COIs) a lot over the years. COIs are important in medicine and science because, as much as physicians and scientists like to think that they are immune to such things, we are as human as anyone else. We are just as prone to unconsciously (or consciously) being influenced by […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Religion

Leaving the cult of antivaccinationism and alt-med

The other day, I got to thinking about cults. The reason is that it’s been clear to me for some time that the antivaccine movement is a quack cult. In fact, a lot of quack groups are very cultish, the example that reminded me of this having been an excellent report published by a young […]