About Respectful Insolence

On a cold, gray, dreary Saturday in December 2004, I sat down and, almost on a whim, started the very first version of Respectful Insolence on Blogspot, a version I now call Respectful Insolence, Mark I. I had been active on the wild West world of discussion forums known as Usenet for several years before […]

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

False balance in reporting the case of a local mother jailed for contempt of court for reneging on an agreement to vaccinate her child

Rachel Bredow is antivaccine and doesn’t want her children vaccinated. Her ex-husband disagrees. When Ms. Bredow violated a court order to vaccinate her child, she was thrown into jail for contempt of court. Unfortunately, our local media have not exactly covered themselves in glory covering this story.

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

If Rigvir is effective “virotherapy” for cancer, why are quack clinics selling it and quackery promoters like Ty Bollinger promoting it?

Last week, I wrote about Rigvir, a “virotherapy” promoted by the International Virotherapy Center (IVC) in Latvia, which did not like what I had to say. When a representative called me to task for referring to the marketing of Rigvir using patient testimonials as irresponsbile, it prompted me to look at how Ty Bollinger’s The Truth About Cancer series promoted Rigvir through patient testimonials and how the IVC itself uses such testimonials. The word “irresponsible” doesn’t even begin to cover it.

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

Antivaxers on Twitter: Fake news and Twitter bots

A new analysis reveals that there are antivaccine bots on Twitter. Why am I not surprised?

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Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Medicine Naturopathy Quackery

Homeopathy at UC-Irvine: The administration can run but it can’t hide from its history of embracing quackery

Last week, UC-Irvine announced a $200 million gift from Susan and Henry Samueli to create a new integrative medicine center. Since then, UC-Irvine has tried to scrub any evidence of homeopathy use on its website. It didn’t work. Unfortunately, thanks to the Samuelis, homeopathy and other pseudoscience are deeply embedded in UC-Irvine, which has become the new epitome of quackademic medicine.