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

Is Sharyl Attkisson feeling the heat over her irresponsible reporting of the Alex Spourdalakis case?

Yesterday, I did a bit of navel gazing about how cranks, quacks, and antivaccinationists have a penchant for attacking skeptics at work in order to try to intimidate them into silence. Reading the post over again, I realize that it came across perhaps more whiny than it should have, but I guess I was just […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Sharyl Attkisson and CBS News: Lying by omission about the murder of autistic teen Alex Spourdalakis

The damaged done by the antivaccine movement is primarily in how it frightens parents out of vaccinating using classic denialist tactics of spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD). Indeed, as has been pointed out many times before, antivaccinationists are often proud of their success in discouraging parents from vaccinating, with one leader of the antivaccine […]

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

Does anyone “recover” from autism?

Way back in the day, when I was a newbie at countering the mass of hysterical pseudoscience that is the antivaccine movement, particularly the myth that vaccines cause autism, a blogger by the ‘nym of Prometheus taught me that autism and autism spectrum disorders (particularly by antivaccinationists and believers in the quackery known as “autism […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Medicine

The annals of “I’m not anti-vaccine,” part 10: Titanic, Oklahoma City, or the Holocaust?

It’s not infrequent that I come under fire from antivaccinationists for, ironically enough, calling them antivaccinationists. “Oh, no,” they protest, “I’m not antivaccine. How dare you call me that? I’m actually a vaccine safety advocate.” Of course, when you probe more closely and ask a few questions, almost inevitably you’ll find that in reality they […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine

Thanks, antivaccinationists. Thanks again for the measles.

Thanks again, antivaccine activists. Thanks for the measles. Again: Last year was the worst year for measles in the U.S. in 15 years, health officials said Thursday. There were 222 cases of measles, a large jump from the 60 or so seen in a typical year. Most of the cases last year were imported — […]