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Bioethics Biology Medicine Politics Science

Fighting back against animal rights terrorists

Enough. I don’t know about you, but as a surgeon and a biomedical researcher, I’m fed up with animal rights terrorists who threaten biomedical research with their misinformation about animal research, their terroristic attacks on scientists who engage in such research, and listening to the despicable self-righteous idiot who is a disgrace to surgeons everywhere, […]

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Cancer Medicine Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Animal rights activists: Even death doesn’t sway them

I have two brief observations to make before I launch into my latest bit of insolence. First off, it figures that, whenever I go away to a meeting, there’s simply an embarrassment of blogging riches. People have been sending me stuff to which, even if I were at home and having a slow week, I […]

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Medicine Politics Science

What is science’s rightful place?

If you’ve browsed the redesigned front page of ScienceBlogs, you’ll see that our benevolent ScienceBlogs Overlords at Seed Magazine have started a project that they have so humbly termed The Rightful Place Project: Reviving Science in America, which is described thusly: In his first speech as President-elect last November, Barack Obama reminded us of the […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Quackery

HIV/AIDS denialism, the Ministry of Truth, and the failure of memory holes in the Internet Age

One of my favorite novels of all time is George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. When it came to imagining the end to which totalitarianism could take us, no one before or since has written a more compelling book about living under such a regime. One aspect of Oceania, the fictional totalitarian state ruled […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Entertainment/culture Medicine Quackery Television

Should pro-vaccine advocates try to get on The Oprah Winfrey Show?

Oprah Winfrey supports quackery. That has been richly demonstrated over the last few years, particularly with her gauzy, praise-filled segments featuring such pro-woo luminaries as Jenny McCarthy, her frequently having physicians boosters of “alternative medicine” like Mehmet Oz and Christiane Northrup on her show, and her tight embrace of New Age “spirituality.” Alarmed at the […]