Categories
Autism

Well, that didn’t take long: The knives come out for Paul Shattuck

Yesterday, I wrote extensively about a new study by Paul Shattuck that seriously casts doubt upon one of the key claims of those arguing that mercury in childhood vaccines causes autism, namely the existence of an “autism epidemic.” These claims are nearly always based on rapidly rising numbers of children being classified as autistic for […]

Categories
Autism

Evidence against an “autism epidemic”

One of the key arguments by advocates claiming a link between mercury in childhood vaccines is that there is an “epidemic” of autism. They’ll claim that autism was unknown before the 1930’s, when thimerosal was first introduced into vaccines. (Never mind that there are plenty of descriptions of autism-like conditions dating from as far back […]

Categories
Complementary and alternative medicine EneMan Evolution Medicine Science

Orac has a change of heart

You know, after all these years as a scientist, physician, and skeptic, I’ve been wondering. Perhaps it’s time to undergo a reassessment of my and philosophy. I’ve always been a bit of a curmudgeon, and it hasn’t really gotten me anywhere. My words appear to have no impact on the credulous. For example, perhaps I’ve […]

Categories
Autism Quackery

A little light weekend reading

While I work on winging my way back to the East Coast, I thought I’d leave you with a couple of links that I became aware of but didn’t get the chance to post. First up is the older piece by that tireless debunker of dubious medicine and quackery and fellow skeptic, Prometheus. In a […]

Categories
Evolution Medicine

Medicine and evolution, part I: Introduction

Longtime readers of this blog may have noticed that, since my move to ScienceBlogs six weeks ago, I haven’t written nearly as much about evolution or intelligent design as I used to on the old blog.. There are probably at least several reasons for this. For one thing, lots of other topics have forced their […]