Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

Oh, no! There’s DNA in my Gardasil! Or is there?

Over the weekend, I chilled out a bit, at least as far as the blog was concerned. I won’t make too much of a secret of it, but thanks to the new policy of the new owners I have a decision to make. In the meantime, while I’m dithering, you, my readers, were deluging me […]

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

The fixed mindset of the anti-vaccine activist

One of my interests in skepticism and critical thinking has been the similarity in the fallacious arguments, approach to data, and general behavior of those who are–to put it generously–not so skeptical or scientific in their approach to life. I’m talking about believers in the paranormal, quacks, anti-vaccine activists, conspiracy theory mavens, Holocaust deniers, creationists, […]

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

A survey administered by a German anti-vaccine homeopath backfires spectacularly

Sometimes I feel a little bit guilty when I’m writing a post deconstructing anti-vaccine nonsense, “alternative medicine” quackery, or some other form of pseudoscience. This guilt usually derives when I end up picking a target that’s just too easy, a study that’s just so mind-numbingly, brain-meltingly awful that it’s not much of a challenge, even […]

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Autism Medicine

Yet another bad day for the anti-vaccine movement 2011

Here we go again. Having been in the blogging biz for nearly seven years and developed a special interest in the anti-vaccine movement, I think I’ve been at this long enough to make some observations with at least a little authority. One thing that I’ve noticed is a very consistent pattern in which, every time […]

Categories
Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

The complexity of cancer, part II: Enter the quacks

A couple of days ago, I couldn’t resist discussing a recent article in the New York Times about recent discoveries in cancer research. I considered the article to be a mix of the good, the bad, and the ugly. While the article did a pretty good job of describing recent discoveries about how noncoding RNA, […]