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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Popular culture Quackery

The Food Babe and Rob Schneider: When companies choose poorly

It’s been a bad week for celebrity quacks; that is, after starting out looking as though it would be a good week. For example, as I discussed a couple of days ago, contender for the title of world’s most brain dead antivaccine conspiracy theorist, washed up comedian Rob Schneider, having somehow managed to land a […]

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

Nuance versus certainty: The disadvantage scientists and physicians have in communicating risk

This post, although it is about an interview with a CDC scientist named William W. Thompson that resulted from the whole “CDC whistleblower” manufactroversy that’s been flogged relentlessly for the last two weeks, since antivaccine “heros” Andrew Wakefield and Brian Hooker released a despicable race-bating video flogging Hooker’s utterly incompetent reanalysis of a ten year […]

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Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Popular culture Quackery

After all this time, Dr. Bob Sears finally tips his hand on vaccines, part IV

As hard as it is to believe, there was once a time when I (sort of) gave “Dr. Bob” Sears the benefit of the doubt. You remember Dr. Bob, don’t you? Son of the famous pediatrician Dr. William Sears, who was best known for his “Sears Parenting Library” and is a not infrequent guest on […]

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Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Popular culture Quackery Religion Science

More Tooth Fairy science studying acupuncture

I must confess, I had a rather rough time yesterday. Actually, it’s been a rough winter, at least as far as my car is concerned. Record amounts of snow and a January much colder than usual have wreaked havoc on the roads around where I live, producing craters that make our roads and freeways look […]

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Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine

More credulous reporting on placebo effects

Now that Trine Tsouderos no longer works for the Chicago Tribune, there aren’t that many reliable generalist medical/science reporters around any more. For example, here in the U.S. there’s Marilyn Marchionne at the AP, Gina Kolata of the New York Times, and then there’s Sharon Begley, who used to be at Newsweek but is now […]