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Antivaccine nonsense Computers and social media Medicine Pseudoscience Skepticism/critical thinking

Did Anthony Fauci have a “conflict of interest” because his wife is Chief of Bioethics at NIH?

While Orac was off last week, Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk resurrected an antivax conspiracy theory that Anthony Fauci’s wife was “supposed to make sure” that he “behaves ethically.”

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Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Cancer Medicine

There is no evidence that COVID-19 vaccines cause “turbo cancer”

Over the last several months, antivaxxers have been claiming that COVID-19 vaccines cause “turbo cancer”, cancers (or cancer recurrences) of a particularly aggressive and fast-growing variety diagnosed in younger and younger patients. “Turbo cancer” is not a thing, and the evidence cited is as weak as any antivax “evidence”, including anecdotes and misinterpretation of epidemiology.

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Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Clinical trials Medicine

Update: An antivax preprint is now antivax propaganda disguised as a peer-reviewed publication in…Vaccine!

In order portray COVID-19 vaccines as dangerous, Peter Doshi has now managed to get poorly designed and performed “reanalyses” of the clinical trial data used by the FDA to grant emergency use approval of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines published in two reputable journals, The BMJ and Vaccine? What happened?

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Zebrafish and Jessica Rose versus vaccines?

Orac had thought he’d seen everything from antivaxxers; that is, until he saw Jessica Rose invoke a zebrafish study to claim that the spike protein from COVID-19 vaccines is deadly.

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine

Antivaxxers rejoice over the spillover of distrust of COVID-19 vaccines to all vaccines

Distrust of COVID-19 vaccines has led to spillover of distrust to all childhood vaccines, and among antivaxxers antivaxxers is much rejoicing.