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

In the era of Donald Trump, will the states save us from antivaxers?

There might be an antivaxer in the White House right now, but it’s at the state level where vaccine policy and school vaccine mandates are decided.

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Nanoparticles: The new One True Cause of All Disease?

They’re here, they’re there, they’re everywhere! If you believe certain quacks, nanoparticles are the new One True Cause of All Disease, and the evil food industry and big pharma are trying to poison you with them.

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Sayer Ji: Willfully misunderstanding overdiagnosis and misdiagnosis since…forever

If there’s one lesson that I like to emphasize while laying down my near-daily dose of Insolence, both Respectful and not-so-Respectful, it’s that practicing medicine and surgery is complicated. Part of the reason that it’s complicated is that for many diseases our understanding is incomplete, meaning that physicians have to apply existing science to their […]

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Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Popular culture Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Better late than never: Orac comments on the hijacking of evidence-based medicine

It’s no secret that I’m a fan of John Ioannidis. (If you don’t believe me, just type Ioannidis’ name into the blog search box and see how many posts you find.) Over the last couple of decades, Ioannidis has arguably done more to reveal the shortcomings of the medical research enterprise that undergirds our treatments, […]

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Biology Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Pseudoscience Skepticism/critical thinking

Germ theory denialism and the magical mystical microbiome

Whenever I point out that a very common thread of “thought”—if you can call it “thought”—in alternative medicine is nothing more than germ theory denialism, the usual reaction is incredulity. Newbies who haven’t encountered quacks before invariably do a double take when I inform them that germ theory denialism is a thing, particularly among antivaccine […]