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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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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Television

Adventures in bad veterinary medicine reported by the local media

We skeptical bloggers try our best to educate our readers about science and critical thinking, in the process explaining why various forms of pseudoscience, quackery, and cranker are, well, pseudoscience, quackery, and crankery. Unfortunately, even the most heavy duty, high traffic skeptical blogs don’t have anywhere near the reach of the mass media, in particular […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Medicine Popular culture Pseudoscience Quackery Science Skepticism/critical thinking

A misguided “chalkboard talk”

Sometimes I feel like Dug, the talking dog in the movie Up, in that when it comes to blogging I’m often easily distracted. The reason I say this is because there’s been a “viral” (if you can call it that) video floating around the antivaccine quackery blogosphere that antivaccinationists are passing around as though it’s […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Entertainment/culture Medicine Television

The resident anti-vaccine reporter at CBS News strikes again

I’m not infrequently asked why the myth that vaccines cause autism and other anti-vaccine myths are so stubbornly resistant to the science that time and time again fails to support them. Certainly useful celebrity idiots like Jenny McCarthy are one reason. So, too, are anti-vaccine propaganda websites and blogs such as Age of Autism and […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Medicine

CBS News’ resident anti-vaccine propagandist Sharyl Attkisson abuses the Hannah Poling case again

It’s been a while since we’ve heard from CBS News’ resident anti-vaccine propagandist Sharyl Attkisson. When last we saw her, she was sucking up to the man whose discredited pseudoscience started the modern anti-vaccine movement, Andrew Wakefield, a man who went on to have his medical license ignominiously taken away. Prior to that, she had […]