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Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Medicine Politics Skepticism/critical thinking

Martin Kulldorff promotes an old antivax narrative about “natural immunity”

Great Barrington Declaration author Martin Kulldorff, who is also the “scientific director” of the Brownstone Institute, a public health science denialist right wing “think tank,” is promoting an antivax narrative about “natural immunity” against COVID-19, because of course he is.

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Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Medicine Pseudoscience

Scientific review articles as disinformation

Antivaxxers have always written dubious scientific review articles to try to make their wild speculations about vaccine science seem credible. Usually such articles wind up in bottom-feeding journals. Unfortunately a recent pseudo-review article was published by an Elsevier journal, making it seem more credible when it isn’t.

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Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Integrative medicine Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery

Is it even possible to design high quality acupuncture trials?

Acupuncture advocates have published guidelines for “rigorous” acupuncture randomized controlled trials. While that sounds good on the surface, the devil is in the details, which reveal that acupuncturists’ dedication to scientific rigor is perhaps not so strong.

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Bad science Biology Clinical trials Medicine Science Skepticism/critical thinking

SBM versus ivermectin and other implausible treatments

Another large randomized controlled trial for ivermectin showed no efficacy for the early treatment of COVID-19. This is not a surprise to science-based medicine advocates. Here’s why the story of ivermectin shows that SBM isn’t just for “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM) —and never was.

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Bad science Clinical trials Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery

Yet another negative ivermectin study, this time in the NEJM

Yesterday the The New England Journal of Medicine published a high quality clinical trial that found no benefit in treating COVID-19 with ivermectin. Cue attacks on the study.