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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Medicine Popular culture Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking Surgery Television

America’s quack, dissected yet again

If there’s one doctor who irritates me possibly more than any other, it’s got to be “America’s Doctor,” a.k.a. Dr. Mehmet Oz, thanks to The Dr. Oz Show. He’s been an all too frequent topic on this blog and at my not-so-super-secret other blog. Of course, I refer to him as “America’s quack,” because, well, […]

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Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Popular culture Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

A highly misguided concern about California SB 277 and cracking down on nonmedical vaccine exemptions

It never ceases to amaze me how very smart people can miss some very obvious points. Now, as most of my readers know, I was at NECSS over the weekend. Because I was busy giving a talk, doing panels, and then enjoying other speakers’ talks, I wasn’t paying much attention to some of the issues […]

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Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Popular culture Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Combatting antiscience denialism and quackery

I spent a nice long weekend in New York at NECSS, which has grown to quite the big skeptical conference since the last time I was there five years ago. The Friday Science-Based Medicine session went quite well and, as far as I could tell, appeared to be well-received; so hopefully we will be doing […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Popular culture Quackery Science Skepticism/critical thinking

The antivaccine movement wins in Oregon: Senate Bill 442 is dead

How quickly things change. If there’s one thing I always feel obligated to warn my fellow pro-science advocates about vaccines and the antivaccine movement, it’s that we can never rest on our laurels or assume that the tide is turning in our direction. The reason is simple: Antivaccinationism is a powerful belief system, every bit […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Humor Medicine Politics Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking Television

The annals of “I’m not anti-vaccine,” part 13: Nobody wants to admit to being “antivaccine”

Sometimes, in order to understand advocates of pseudoscience, such as antivaccinationists, it’s a useful exercise to look at their most extreme elements. Admittedly, in focusing on such loons, one does take the risk of generalizing the nuts to everyone a bit much, but on the other hand I’ve often found that the extremists are basically […]