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

Fun with phone surveys and vaccines

J. B. Handley never ceases to amaze me how much he is willing to torture me with his abuses of science, never mind his childish attempts to annoy me by cybersquatting domain names that he thinks I want. So there I was, all set to blog about a rather amusing homeopath that I’ve come across, […]

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Evolution Intelligent design/creationism Pseudoscience Religion Science Skepticism/critical thinking

“Darwinism”: A “marketing problem”?

Longtime readers of this blog may recall Pat Sullivan, Jr. He first popped up as a commenter here two years ago, when I first dove into applying skepticism and critical thinking to the pseudoscientific contention that vaccines in general or the thimerosal preservatives in vaccines cause autism. He’s a true believer in the mercury militia […]

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News of the Weird

A sign of the times, part 2

This story’s being sent about as an example of stupid criminals, à la News of the Weird, but I just view it as a sign of the times: Bellacino’s Pizzeria closes at 9 p.m. That’s when one of the employees left work out a back door, where his car was parked. He was approached by […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Friday Woo Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Your Friday Dose of Woo: The quantum homeopathic gyroscopic circle is complete

In my rigid, Western, scientific way of thinking, things generally have a beginning, a middle, and and end, the arrow of time marching relentlessly onward. However, it occurs to me that this is the very last edition of Your Friday Dose of Woo of its first year. Last June, when I started this, almost on […]

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Bioethics Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Here we go again: More radiation for Starchild Abraham Cherrix

I’ve written extensively before about Starchild Abraham Cherrix, the (now) 17-year-old who was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease when he was 15 and who, after one course of chemotherapy, refused any further evidence-based medicine in favor of the quackery known as Hoxsey therapy. His refusal led to a big legal battle in Virginia, and the court […]