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

Jenny McCarthy shows off her knowledge of science

While I’m on the topic, blog bud has proclaimed that he loves Jenny McCarthy’s new blog at the Oprah website, in particular her Poop Stories. Personally, when I first saw Jenny’s blog, my first thought was that a question I had always had ever since Jenny McCarthy became the chief propagandist for the antivaccine movement […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

The price of anti-vaccine fanaticism, part 2

I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with the antivaccine propaganda blog Age of Autism. The reason for the hate part should be obvious. AoA is, without a doubt, a cesspool of pseudoscience and anti-vaccine propaganda. All while oh-so-self-righteously denying that its agenda is “anti-vaccine,” AoA on a daily basis lays down articles blaming […]

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Bioethics Clinical trials Medicine Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Quoth Elsevier: “Whoops, I did it again.” (Six times, actually)

Remember about a week ago, when I lamented how scientific publisher Elsevier had created a fake journal for Merck that reprinted content from other Elsevier journals favorable to Merck products in a format that looked every bit like a peer-reviewed journal but without any disclaimers to let the unwary know that it wasn’t a peer-reviewed […]

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

Another child sacrificing himself on the altar of irrational belief

Regular readers here know that I really hate to see stories like the one I’m about to discuss, specifically that of 13-year-old Daniel Hauser, a boy with Hodgkin’s lymphoma who is refusing chemotherapy based on religion and his preference for “alternative” therapy, whose parents are also supporting his decision. Since I’m a bit behind on […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Quackery

I really admire skeptical English bloggers and commentators…

…because they blog under the shadow of the United Kingdom’s insane libel laws. Witness this travesty of a ruling on the libel case against Simon Singh by the British Chiropractic Association, as related by Jack of Kent. I first learned about the UK’s exceedingly plaintiff-friendly libel laws when, shortly after I became interested in Holocaust […]