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

Regulating the magic that is homeopathy: I have a very bad feeling about the upcoming FDA public hearing

Once again, repeat after me: Homeopathy is quackery. In fact, it’s what I like to refer to as The One Quackery To Rule Them All. You would think that, in a modern world and given the incredible advancements in our scientific understanding of biology, physiology, chemistry, and physics over the course of the over 200 […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Medicine Quackery

Homeopathy was quackery in 1796, it was quackery in 1988, and it will still be quackery in 2096

This is a post about homeopathic quackery. But I repeat myself. Those of you who’ve been readers here for a while have no doubt encountered Dana Ullman. He’s been popping up from time to time as a topic of this blog for many years now, almost to the very beginning, when he began spewing the […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

“I don’t make assumptions” about vaccines and people’s motives

Every so often, I like to try to get into the mind of an antivaccine crank, a quack, or crank of another variety, because understanding what makes cranks tick (at least, as much as I can given that I’m not one) can be potentially very useful in my work trying to counter them. On the […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Winning antivaccine hearts and minds

I’ve been writing about the antivaccine movement for a long time. The reasons are many, but they boil down to a handful. First of all, it interests me. It interests me as an example of pseudoscience and quackery, how it spreads, and how antiscience cranks attack science. More importantly, it’s dangerous. The antivaccine movement is […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Friday Woo Homeopathy Medicine Quackery Science

Your Friday Dose of Woo: Homeopathic gene therapy?

It’s been a long time, been a long time, been a long lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely time. Besides indulging my taste for shamelessly working lyrics from Led Zeppelin and other classic bands into my post, what am I talking about? Simple. Things have been way too serious lately. I mean, just look at yesterday’s post. […]