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

Brian Martin again: Criticizing Judy Wilyman’s antivaccine thesis is suppression of dissent

One of the cool things about being a longtime blogger in the skeptical world with a reasonably high profile is that I’ve met, either virtually or in person at various skeptic conferences, a wide variety of people from all over the world. One place in particular that has a vibrant skeptic movement is, of course, […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

The CDC whistleblower documents: A whole lot of nothing and no conspiracy to hide an MMR-autism link

One of the stories dominating my blogging in 2015 was a manufactroversy that started in August 2014 when, after several months of rumbling in the antivaccine crankosphere that there was a CDC scientist ready to blow the whistle on an alleged coverup of evidence that vaccines cause autism, Andrew Wakefield, ever the publicity hog, released […]

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Announcements Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Skepticism/critical thinking

Out with the old year, in with the new…with Insolence

As 2015 draws to a close today, all I can think is: Another year in the can. Since my family is here, and it’s a holiday, I’m going to keep this one brief and wish everyone a Happy New Year. In addition, I can’t help but wonder what’s going to happen in 2016. Who could […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Quoth Vox Day: Antivaxers are more educated. Quoth the study Vox cites: Not exactly…

Vaccines and the antivaccine movement were in the news a lot in 2015. The year started out with a huge measles outbreak originating at Disneyland over the holidays last year and dominated news coverage in the early months of 2015. This outbreak had enormous consequences. It galvanized public opinion such that something I had never […]

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

What? Removing thimerosal from vaccines caused the autism epidemic?

The blog post of mine that arguably “put me on the map” in the skeptical blogosphere was my very Insolent, very sarcastic deconstruction of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s deceptive pseudoscience-ridden bit of fear mongering that he called Deadly Immunity. It was originally jointly published both by Salon.com and Rolling Stone, a blot that neither publication […]