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Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Dr. Lipson versus Dr. Brownstein: Science versus antivaccine misinformation and fear mongering in my own back yard

It always irritates me when I discover a new antivaccine crank in my state; so you can imagine how irritated I become when I discover one right in my very city (OK, metropolitan area). When that happens, it becomes a bit more personal than my usual mission to refute antivaccine misinformation. So I was most […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Quoth Vox Day: Antivaxers are more educated. Quoth the study Vox cites: Not exactly…

Vaccines and the antivaccine movement were in the news a lot in 2015. The year started out with a huge measles outbreak originating at Disneyland over the holidays last year and dominated news coverage in the early months of 2015. This outbreak had enormous consequences. It galvanized public opinion such that something I had never […]

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Clinical trials Medicine Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Fixing peer review

I’ve frequently noted that one of the things most detested by quacks and promoters of pseudoscience is peer review. Creationists hate peer review. HIV/AIDS denialists hate it. Anti-vaccine cranks like those at Age of Autism hate it. Indeed, as blog bud Mark Hoofnagle Mark Hoofnagle, pointed out several years ago, pseudoscientists and cranks of all […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Science Skepticism/critical thinking

What? Removing thimerosal from vaccines caused the autism epidemic?

The blog post of mine that arguably “put me on the map” in the skeptical blogosphere was my very Insolent, very sarcastic deconstruction of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s deceptive pseudoscience-ridden bit of fear mongering that he called Deadly Immunity. It was originally jointly published both by Salon.com and Rolling Stone, a blot that neither publication […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Biology Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Science Skepticism/critical thinking

A manual of spectacularly bad antivaccine arguments

To say that the relationship that antivaccine activists have with science and fact is a tenuous, twisted one is a major understatement. Despite mountains of science that says otherwise, antivaccinationists still cling to the three core tenets of their faith, namely that (1) vaccines are ineffective (or at least nowhere near as effective as health […]