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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Politics

Something I never thought I’d see: RFK Jr. is apparently running for President

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is apparently planning to challenge President Biden for the Democratic Presidential nomination. WTF is going on?

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine

Autism prevalence increases to 1 in 36, and antivaxxers freak out…again

The CDC updated its estimates for the prevalence of autism spectrum disorders. Predictably, antivaxxers blame the increasing prevalence of ASDs reported, particularly in Black children, on “environmental factors,” which is antivax code for, “Vaccines are to blame.”

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Politics Popular culture

The GOP was the antivax party before Ron DeSantis, but now he’s turbocharged its resistance

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has apparently decided that riding the antivax wave is his key to the GOP nomination. This wouldn’t have represented a viable strategy if the GOP hadn’t become the antivax party over the last decade or so.

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Clinical trials Medicine Skepticism/critical thinking

The Cochrane mask fiasco: Does EBM predispose to COVID contrarianism?

Earlier this month the Cochrane Collaborative was forced to walk back the conclusions of a review by Tom Jefferson et al that had been spun in the media as proving that “masks don’t work.” Tom Jefferson himself has been problematic about vaccines for a long time, but the rot goes deeper. What is it about the evidence-based medicine paradigm that results in misleading conclusions?

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Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Clinical trials Medicine Pseudoscience

Andrew Wakefield 25 years later: Paving the way for FLCCC and COVID quacks

It was 25 years ago last week that Andrew Wakefield launched the modern iteration of the antivaccine movement.In doing so, he laid down a template that antivax quacks today still follow.