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

Two sad stories about the state of medicine

Medical therapies should be based upon science. That is a recurrent theme, indeed, the major theme, of this blog. Based on that simple thesis, I’ve spent the last decade examining “unconventional” treatments and evaluating the scientific basis (or, much more usually, the lack of a scientific basis) for various treatments. Yes, I’ve looked at other […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine History Hitler Zombie Holocaust Homeopathy Medicine Naturopathy Quackery World War II

School vaccine mandates are against the Nuremberg Code?

About a week and a half ago, I took note of a rather unhinged rant by comedian Rob Schneider about vaccines in which he trotted out an antivaccine movement’s greatest hits compendium of pseudoscience, misinformation, and logical fallacies, all in the service of opposing California Bill AB 2109. Antivaccine activists hate this piece of legislation […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Computers and social media Quackery

Dr. Google and Mr. Jim

What would we do without the Internet? It’s become so necessary, so pervasive, so utterly all-enveloping that it’s hard to imagine a world without it. Given how much it pervades everything these days, it’s easy to forget that it wasn’t that long ago that the Internet was primarily the domain of universities and large research […]

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Cancer Medicine Politics

Simplistic criticisms of cancer therapy by Dr. Margaret Cuomo

I wondered how long it would take for someone critical of current cancer care to capitalize on the recently reported health misfortune of a celebrity. The answer, unfortunately, is “not long at all.” I will admit, however, that the source of that use and abuse of the misfortune of a celebrity was not the usual […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Computers and social media Humor

The Antivaccine Ten Commandments

Although I’m interested in skepticism in general, I have a tendency to gravitate towards one particular form of pseudoscience (alternative medicine) and, in particular, a certain kind of that particular form of pseudoscience, namely antivaccine quackery. However, as much as I keep returning to the antivaccine movement, I keep noticing just how much it shares […]