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Biology Cancer Medicine Physics Pseudoscience Skepticism/critical thinking

The New York Times and fear mongering about the Apple Watch and wearable tech

The New York Times Styles Section giveth. The New York Times Styles Section taketh away. Last week, The NYT Styles Section published an excellent deconstruction of the pseudoscientific activities of Vani Hari, a.k.a. The Food Babe, by Courtney Rubin. Although skeptics might think that it was a tad too “balanced” (as did I), by and […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Television

False balance about vaccines rises from the grave…again

Imagine, if you will, a time machine capsule going all the way back to the earliest days of this blog, back in 2005 and 2006. Now consider the antivaccine movement, which somehow I became very interested in very early, an interest that continues to this day. Do you remember one theme that I kept hitting […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Bioethics Complementary and alternative medicine History Holocaust Holocaust denial Medicine Politics Popular culture Quackery Religion

Nobody promotes antivaccine nonsense in my state…without receiving some Insolence

Readers who’ve been following this blog a while would probably not be surprised to learn that one of my all time favorite movies is Ghostbusters. In fact, it’s hard to believe that the movie is now 30 years old. It makes me feel so old, given that I saw the movie in the theater when […]

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Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Religion Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Who knew? My state’s vaccine personal belief exemption rate stinks! (Part 2: What to do.)

After yesterday’s post on the depressingly high (and increasing, apparently) rate of personal belief exemptions to vaccination requirements for entering school in the state of Michigan, I felt the need to pontificate a bit further. The reason is that MLive.com has posted some followup stories. Also, I didn’t have a lot of time last night […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Who knew? My state’s vaccine personal belief exemption rate stinks!

One aspect of my life that’s kind of strange is how I’ve basically ended up back where I started. I was born and raised in southeast Michigan (born in the city of Detroit, actually, although my parents moved to the suburbs when I was 10). After going to college and medical school at the University […]