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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Entertainment/culture Medicine Popular culture Quackery Television

Farrah Fawcett, anal cancer, and “alternative medicine cancer cures”

Note the followup post to this one, in which Orac admits error. You just have to read it, given how rarely Orac messes up when speculating… Our cancer center has a large, open area interspersed with patient waiting areas, one of which is the clinic where I see patients, that I frequently must traverse to […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

More woo on–where else?–The Huffington Post

It just never ends. Four years ago, I was one of the very first bloggers to notice that the then-new liberal blog The Huffington Post was from its very inception a hotbed of antivaccine lunacy. David Kirby, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Dr. Jay Gordon, Deirde Imus, all the luminaries of the antivaccine movement were there […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Science Skepticism/critical thinking

On “open-mindedness”

One of the most common refrains from advocates of pseudoscientific and paranormal ideas is that critics are “close-minded,” that they reject out of hand any idea that does not fit within their world view. Of course, this is a canard, given that science thrives on the open and free exchange of ideas, and it is […]

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

I really wish this were an April Fools’ Day joke…

…but sadly, it’s not. Jenny McCarthy has struck again. Yesterday, given the release of Jenny McCarthy’s new book espousing antivaccinationism and autism quackery and the attendant media blitz the antivaccine movement has organized to promote it, I predicted that a wave of stupid is about to fall upon our great nation. Well, the stupid has […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Religion

Dr. Emoto’s water woo metastasizes

Indiana Jones had a saying: “Snakes. Why’d it have to be snakes?” This line was most famously delivered in Raiders of the Lost Ark after he and his friend Sallah had opened the Well of Souls and were staring down into it. Sallah noticed that the ground appeared to be moving within; so Indy shined […]