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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Medicine Politics Quackery

Michelle Bachmann’s anti-vaccine statements cross the political pseudoscience divide

I don’t often blog about politics anymore. As I’ve said on more than one occasion, political bloggers are a dime a dozen. Rare is the one that interests me much. However, sometimes things happen that lead me to make an exception, except that this time it’s not really an exception because it has to do […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Blogging Complementary and alternative medicine Computers and social media Medicine Personal

The consequences of blogging under one’s own name

Sadly, a crank has silenced another skeptic. Many of you may know EpiRen, which is the Twitter and blog handle (and sometimes commenting handle here) of René Najera. René is an epidemiologist employed by the state public health department of health of an East Coast state and has been a force for reality- and science-based […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Medicine

The mercury zombie rises again…this time, in the grandchildren of Pink disease (infantile acrodynia) sufferers

Here we go again. Starting sometime in 2007, back when the idea that mercury in vaccines was the cause of the “autism epidemic” of the late 1990s and into the new century, I started referring to the “mercury/autism” hypothesis as being dead, dead, dead, as in pining for the fjords dead. Then, depending on what […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

“Tell both sides” strikes again in vaccine reporting

Over the years that I’ve been following the anti-vaccine movement, I’ve become familiar with typical narratives that reporters use when reporting on the vaccine fears stirred up by anti-vaccine activists. One narrative is the “brave maverick doctor” narrative, in which an iconoclastic quack (such as Mark Geier or Andrew Wakefield, for example) is portrayed fighting […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Bad science and bad arguments for “integrative pediatrics”

There’s a website out there that calls itself Opposing Views. I haven’t visited it in a while, but its very reason for existence and philosophy seems to be built on the “tell both sides” fallacy that so irritates me. In other words, Opposing Views appears to be built from the ground up to provide “balance” […]