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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery

“Amnesty” according to Emily Oster: “Admit you were wrong!”

Economist turned COVID-19 contrarian Emily Oster recently published an article in The Atlantic about offering amnesty and forgiveness over the pandemic. Shorter Oster: “Admit you were wrong!”

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

What makes a COVID-19 “contrarian” doctor—or any quack?

In 2008, I tried to answer the question: How do doctors become contrarians, quacks, and antivaxxers? A Twitter encounter suggested to me not just answers but that an update to that post is massively overdue.

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Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking Surgery

Dr. Charlie Teo is back in the news

I wrote about neurosurgeon Dr. Charlie Teo and his supposedly near-miraculous resections of “inoperable” brain tumors. He’s back, and it turns out that I was likely way too easy on him a decade ago.

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Politics

Transmission gambit: An old antivax trope is resurrected

Recently, antivaxxers were all over social media after Tucker Carlson touted a “revelation” that the phase 3 clinical trial used to support licensure of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine didn’t examine its ability to block transmission as meaning that its inability to block transmission had been “covered up”. It wasn’t, and antivaxxers are ignoring everything we’ve learned over the last two years to make the claim that vaccines “don’t prevent transmission”.

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Politics

Tucker Carlson lies about the ACIP

The CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) is meeting today. Last night Tucker Carlson lied about it as mandating COVID-19 vaccines for children before they can go to school.