Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Politics Pseudoscience Religion

The latest attempt by the antivaccine movement to use religion to oppose school vaccine mandates

Antivaxxers frequently claim that their objection to vaccines is based on their religion. Another attempt to frame opposition to school vaccine mandates as religious freedoms is making the rounds.

Categories
Medicine Popular culture Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Is medical error really the third most common cause of death in the US?

The claim that medical errors are the third leading cause of death in the US has always rested on very shaky evidence; yet it has become common wisdom that is cited as though everyone accepts it. But if estimates of 250,000 to 400,000 deaths due to medical error are way too high, what is the real number? A recently published study suggests that it’s almost certainly a lot lower.

Categories
Cancer Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery

The “Cancer Truther” movement

Denial of the benefits of chemotherapy is very prevalent in “natural health” movements. This denial is based on fear mongering, pseudoscience, and conspiracy theories and thus shares many similarities with the antivaccine movement. How can the “chemo truth” spread by “cancer truthers”?

Categories
Cancer Medicine Popular culture

A tourist finds breast cancer after a thermal scan at Camera Obscura. That doesn’t mean thermography works.

Bal Gill saw a hot spot on her breast on a thermal image she had taken at Camera Obscura in Edinburgh. This led her to see her doctor, who diagnosed breast cancer. Although a happy coincidence, this incident does not mean that thermography is an effective modality to detect occult breast cancer.

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Medicine Popular culture Pseudoscience Quackery

An attempt to “Null”-ify Wikipedia on science

Love it or hate it, Wikipedia is a main go-to rough and ready source of information for millions of people. Although I’ve had my problems with Wikipedia and used to ask whether it could provide reliable information on medicine and, in particular, alternative medicine and vaccines, given that anyone can edit it, I now conclude that Wikipedia must be doing OK, at least in these areas. After all, some of the highest profile promoters of alternative and “integrative” medicine hate Wikipedia, to the point of attacking it and concocting conspiracy theories about it.