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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

For shame! Nature shills for traditional Chinese medicine

Nature is one of the oldest and most respected scientific journals around. It’s been around since 1869 and is said to be the world’s most cited journal. What makes Nature unusual these days is that it’s a general science journal. Astronomy, physics, chemistry, medicine, biology, it publishes it all. The only other journal of its […]

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Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

NCCAM in the news: Why does it still exist?

I’ve made no secret of my admiration for Trine Tsouderos. Whether it be her investigations into the rank quackery of prominent members of the mercury militia wing of the anti-vaccine lunatic fringe, Mark and David Geier, who seem to think that chemical castration is a perfectly fine and dandy treatment for autism because testosterone binds […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Medicine

And global warming is caused by the decrease in the number of pirates or: Why an inorganic chemistry journal should not publish a vaccine epidemiology paper

In my eagerness to pivot back to an area of my interest after having had a little fun with anti-vaccine cranks, I ignored a paper to which several of my readers referred me over the last few days. Many of them had first become aware of it when everybody’s favorite smugly condescending anti-vaccine crank, Ginger […]

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

Anti-vaccine propaganda lands in New York City this weekend

“The Greater Good” is what I like to call an antivaccine propaganda film masquerading as a documentary. And, yes, it’s full of antivaccine misinformation.

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics

“Misinformed consent” rears its ugly head in Pediatrics

I’ve written about the concept of “misinformed” consent with respect to the anti-vaccine movement. To summarize, “misinformed consent” is a perversion of the concept of informed consent in which cranks claim to be championing true informed consent (and, by implication, that opponents have not) when in fact they are presenting a scientifically unsupportable assessment of […]