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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Mothering: A bastion of woo targeted at young mothers

Over the last three weeks, the British Medical Journal (BMJ) has been publishing a multipart expose by investigative journalist Brian Deer that enumerated in detail the specifics of how a British gastroenterologist turned hero of the anti-vaccine movement had committed scientific fraud by falsifying key aspects of case reports that he used as the basis […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Medicine Quackery

British science accused in the wake of the MMR scare

I was originally going to blog this yesterday, but Dr. Oz’s offenses against science and medicine on his show that aired on Tuesday kind of pushed it out of the way. It’s not that I didn’t think the third part of Brian Deer’s expose of Andrew Wakefield’s fraud worthy of my attention. Rather, the Oz […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Medicine Quackery

Bravo! Homeopathy deconstructed by the CBC

Something amazing happened on Friday. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to blog it as soon as I would have liked because (1) it happened on Canadian TV and the video wasn’t available to anyone outside of Canada until it showed up on YouTube and (2) Craig Willougby’s changing his mind about Andrew Wakefield really did gobsmack […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Medicine Quackery

The race to flee Andrew Wakefield

What does it take to get an advocate of pseudoscience to change his or her mind? Many are the times I’ve asked myself that question. Over the years, I’ve covered the gamut of techniques, going from what some might call “militant” or even insulting to being as reasoned and calm as can be–and probably everywhere […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Medicine Politics Quackery Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Misdirected criticism by someone from whom I would never have expected it

It is with some trepidation and more than a little regret that I begin writing this piece. The reason for my hesitation is that, by doing so, no matter what I say I’ll be inserting myself into what appears to be a disagreement among people all of whom I admire very much. I don’t really […]