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Entertainment/culture Paranormal Pseudoscience Skepticism/critical thinking Television

Haunting a house in southeast Michigan: I think this reporter missed a possible explanation

For skeptics, TV news in my hometown sucks. Actually, it sucks for just about anyone with two brain cells to rub together, but it’s especially painful for skeptics and scientists to watch. On one station last year, there was the most credulous report I’ve ever seen about–of all things–orbs! It was presented as though these […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Religion

The Catholic Church versus Reiki

Nearly two weeks ago, P.Z. Myers mentioned a story that would normally have provoked a post by me. Specifically, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops had issued a warning against the use of reiki as being unscientific, unproven, and, worse, “dangerous to Christian spiritual health.” Unfortunately, this story came out right before Autism Awareness Month […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Medicine Quackery

When the outbreaks occur, they’ll start in California

I may have been deluding myself when I talked about 2009 shaping up to be a bad year for antivaccinationists. It turns out that the antivaccine movement is succeeding. That’s right, a cadre of upper middle class, scientifically illiterate parents, either full of the arrogance of ignorance or frightened by leaders of the antivaccine movement, […]

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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Surgery

Does alternative medicine use result in worse outcomes in breast cancer?

Has it really been that long? More than two years ago, I wrote a post entitled Death by Alternative Medicine: Who’s to Blame? The topic of the post was a case report that I had heard while visiting the tumor board of an affiliate of my former cancer center describing a young woman who had […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Bioethics Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Religion Skepticism/critical thinking

If you hand me some stupid, yes, in fact I am going to hit you over the head with it. Because you absolutely deserve it.

Oh, goody! Vox Day wants to play. You remember Vox “Hey, it worked for Hitler” Day,” don’t you? It’s been a long time. In fact, I had to do a search to find the last time I had a run-in with him, and it appears that it’s been about a year since I last noted […]