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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

A homeopathic journal club

Due to annoying stuff at work and good stuff personally, I didn’t have time to grind out my usual bit of Insolence, either Respectful or not-so-Respectful, today. Fortunately, there is a long history on this blog, full of good stuff that I can repost. So, as I did when I went to TAM7, I’m picking […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Quackery

The Huffington Post’s war on medical science is noticed

One of the advantages of having been a blogger for nearly five years is that you gain a sense of perspective after having written about various issues over and over for a long time. True, the disadvantage is that it sometimes becomes difficult to think of something new to say about longstanding issues. Even so, […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Pseudoscience Quackery Religion Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Senator Tom Harkin’s and Representative Darrell Issa’s war on medical science

In discussions of that bastion of what Harriet Hall (a.k.a. The SkepDoc) likes to call “tooth fairy science,” where sometimes rigorous science, sometimes not, is applied to the study of hypotheses that are utterly implausible and incredible from a basic science standpoint (such as homeopathy or reiki), the National Center of Complementary and Alternative Medicine […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Biology Complementary and alternative medicine Entertainment/culture Evolution Intelligent design/creationism Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Science Skepticism/critical thinking Television

Bill Maher and “anti-science”

Last week, I expressed my surprise and dismay that the Atheist Alliance International chose Bill Maher for the Richard Dawkins Award. I was dismayed because Maher has championed pseudoscience, including dangerous antivaccine nonsense, germ theory denialism complete with repeating myths about Louis Pasteur supposedly recanting on his deathbed, a href=”http://oracknows.blogspot.com/2005/12/bill-maher-anti-vax-wingnut.html”>hostility towards “Western medicine” and an […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Religion Skepticism/critical thinking

Bill Maher gets the Richard Dawkins Award? That’s like Jenny McCarthy getting an award for public health

Although I often don’t agree with him and have cooled on him lately, I still rather like–even admire–Richard Dawkins. While it’s true I’ve taken him to task for having a tin ear for bioethics, lamented his walking blindly right into charges of anti-Semitism (no, I don’t think he’s an anti-Semite), and half-defended/half-criticized him for seeming […]