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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Politics

“New school” anti-(COVID-19)-vaxxers are all-in on “old school” vaccines-cause-autism antivax

Over the last month, Orac has noticed that “new school” COVID-19 antivaxxers are rediscovering old school “vaccines cause autism” pseudoscience in a huge way. Also, there’s transphobia. Lots of transphobia. WTF is going on?

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Antivaccine nonsense Cancer Medicine Quackery

ProtocolKills.com revisited: Misinformed refusal turned up to 11

Back in the day, I used to refer to something I dubbed “misinformed refusal,” a term that refers to how antivaxxers had weaponized “informed consent” by inverting it to frighten parents against vaccinating. In the age of the pandemic, ProtocolKills.com generalizes misinformed refusal to all COVID-19 treatments.

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Antivaccine nonsense Cancer Medicine Quackery

ProtocolKills.com: An old quack narrative reborn for COVID-19

Quacks claim that medicine, not the disease, kills, with their nostrums as the cure. ProtocolKills.com shows that victims and their families are often their best spokespeople because they are so sympathetic and questioning their testimonials is easily portrayed as attacking very sympathetic victims, just as Stanislaw Burzynski did for decades before the pandemic.

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Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Medicine Skepticism/critical thinking

Neil deGrasse Tyson demonstrates why debating cranks is a horrible idea

Astrophysicist and famed science communicator Neil deGrasse Tyson appeared on The Highwire, an antivax video podcast, to “debate” its host, antivax propagandist Del Bigtree. This incident demonstrates quite well why it is almost never a good idea for a scientist to agree to “debate” science deniers.

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Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Clinical trials Medicine Pseudoscience

Andrew Wakefield 25 years later: Paving the way for FLCCC and COVID quacks

It was 25 years ago last week that Andrew Wakefield launched the modern iteration of the antivaccine movement.In doing so, he laid down a template that antivax quacks today still follow.