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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Medicine Quackery

Deaths from vaccines in Japan?

Confusing correlation with causation. Post hoc ergo propter hoc. These are two of the most common errors human beings make. Indeed, they’re natural errors that our brains appear hard-wired to make, and, without scientific training, it’s virtually impossible to avoid making the conclusion that, because two occurrences correlate with each other they must be related […]

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Cancer Medicine Skepticism/critical thinking

When skepticism about medicine devolves into nihilism

A couple of weeks ago, the ever-inimitably sarcastic master of pus himself, Mark Crislip, posted an excellent deconstruction of a very disappointing article that was published in the most recent issue of Skeptical Inquirer, the flagship publication of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI). I say “disappointing,” because I was disappointed to see SI (Skeptical […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Politics

The Supreme Court rules on Bruesewitz v. Wyeth and vaccine injury cases

Hard as it is to believe, it’s been nearly a year since I first learned that the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case regarding the legitimacy of the vaccine court. The long version can be found here, but the short version is that last March SCOTUS agreed to hear a case regarding the constitutionality […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

AOL buys The Huffington Post and a quack sees an opportunity

Things are pretty hairy this week, what with a couple of grant deadlines fast approaching, not to mention a rather important site visit at my institution later this week. As a result, I had been intending to post a “rerun” today, but then I saw something that just cracked me up so much that I […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

The clueless cite the ignorant to argue against vaccines

Remember Medical Voices? It’s a group that I first discovered a year and a half ago that represented itself as a group of physicians and medical professionals who wanted to produce the “most comprehensive educational center on the Internet for physicians seeking the truth about vaccines.” Of course, it didn’t take me long to realize […]