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

Accusations against skeptical physicians: 1. “You have no compassion”

Sometimes I wonder if subjecting myself to all this woo is going to my head. Why do I worry that this might be the case? Recently, I made the mistake of getting involved in an e-mail exchange with a prominent antivaccinationist. Perhaps it was my eternal optimism that led me to do this, my inability […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Entertainment/culture Medicine Popular culture Quackery

Beware and get ready, my U.K. readers, part 3: The credulous media coverage of David Kirby’s visit has begun

I figured it was coming, although I didn’t think it would come this far before David Kirby’s impending visit to the U.K., but I guess that’s the fruit of his being invited by a woo-loving Lord to give a briefing at Parliament. This time it comes in the form of an article in the Daily […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Epi Wonk versus Mark and David Geier: Guess who wins?

There’s a new blog in town that I’ve been meaning to pimp. It’s a blog by a retired epidemiologist who got things started looking at the role of diagnostic substitution in autism diagnoses and argued that the autism “epidemic” is an artifact of changing diagnostic criteria. The blog is Epi Wonk, and it’s a good […]

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

Some monkey business in autism research (or, why it is not a good idea to provoke Orac)

Believe it or not, even I, Orac, sometimes get tired of blogging about antivaccination idiocy. Indeed, this week was just such a time. I hope you can’t blame me. After all, the last few months have been so chock-full of some of the most bizarre and annoying antics of antivaccinationists at such a frequent clip […]

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Cancer Clinical trials Medicine Surgery

On the enormous variability of cancer behavior

Perhaps one of the most common misconceptions held about cancer among lay people is that it is one disease. We often hear non-physicians talk about “curing cancer” as though it were a single disease. Sometimes, we even hear physicians, who should know better, using the same sort of fuzzy thinking and language about “curing cancer” […]