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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Andrew Wakefield: Attracting antivaccine cranks like moths to a flame since 1998

If there’s a story I neglected to mention last week that I should have, it’s that Andrew Wakefield is being a bully again, trying to use legal intimidation to silence his critics, namely Forbes.com blogger Emily Willingham. Of course, Wakefield has done this so many times that the fact that he’s done it once again […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Medicine Naturopathy Quackery

Quoth David Katz: Don’t abandon patients. Abandon science instead.

Dr. David L. Katz is apparently unhappy with me. You remember Dr. Katz, don’t you? If you don’t, I’ll remind you momentarily. If you do, you won’t be surprised. Let me explain a bit first how Dr. Katz recently became aware of me again. A couple of weeks ago, I posted a short (for me) […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine History Holocaust denial Medicine Skepticism/critical thinking

How “they” view “us” (2014 edition)

A week ago or so, I was perusing my Google Alerts, along with various blogs and news websites, looking for something to blog about, when I noticed a disturbance in the pseudoscience Force. It’s a phenomenon I’ve noticed many times before from a wide variety of cranks and quacks, but it all boils down to […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Entertainment/culture Medicine Skepticism/critical thinking

Gluten-free skin and beauty products? More like thought-free…

A couple of Sundays ago (Easter, to be precise), my wife and I were sitting around yesterday reading the Sunday papers and perusing the Internet (as is frequently our wont on Sunday mornings), when I heard a contemptuous harrumph coming from her direction. She then pointed me to an article in our local newspaper entitled […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Naturopathy Politics Quackery

Naturopaths vie for Medicare reimbursement with a dubious survey

Naturopathy is a pseudodiscipline that resembles a Chinese menu of quackery, in which naturopaths select one from column A and two from column B, with each column containing a list of modalities ranging from pure quackery like homeopathy and traditional Chinese medicine to mundane modalities that naturopaths embrace, “rebrand” as “alternative,” and woo-ify and oversell […]