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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Science

Joe Mercola and raw milk faddism invade HuffPo

Since its very inception five years ago, The Huffington Post has been, to steal a phrase from Star Wars, a wretched hive of scum and villainy, at least when it comes to anything resembling medicine. Of course, that’s the problem. Very little, if anything, published in HuffPo resembles actual science-based medicine. The vast majority of […]

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Biology Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Science

When what an acupuncture study shows is much more interesting than what acupuncture believers think it shows

Of all the “alternative” therapies out there, arguably the most studied is the modality known as acupuncture. Perhaps the reason is that, unlike homeopathy, which based on physics, chemistry, and biology alone is so implausible that, for it to “work,” huge swaths of well-established physics and chemistry would have to be shown to be not […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Medicine

Is the anti-vaccine movement fizzling?

After a week of some of the most amazing anti-vaccine craziness that I’ve seen in quite a while, a week that started with anti-vaccine hero Andrew Wakefield’s name being struck off the list of licensed medical practitioners in the U.K. During the entire week, there was (and is ongoing) an anti-vaccine crank conference known as […]

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

Repeat after me: Enforcing medical and scientific standards is not “censorship”

I don’t mean to beat up on Dr. Michael Fitzpatrick. I really don’t. I realize I rather harshly criticized him yesterday for being so hostile to the concept of “denialism,” to the point where he characterized even the use of the term as a means of “suppressing” free speech. Normally, that criticism would have been […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Medicine Politics Quackery

Fun with anti-vaccine petitions: The Chicago Principles on Vaccination Choice

I love it when cranks write petitions. They’re hilarious. Usually, they’re oh-so-serious and ominous, sprinkled with unintentionally, un-self-aware bits of pure comic gold. For example, check out this “petition” being circulated by the anti-vaccine activists, called The Chicago Principles on Vaccination Choice: