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

From deep in the heart of the “organized campaign” against Judy Wilyman’s antivaccine PhD thesis

Politicians and activists know that one of the most effective ways to discredit critics is to try to portray them as (1) being in the pay of someone else, such as a big corporation, or (2) part of an “organized” effort to criticize them, or (3) preferably both. That’s why antivaccine cranks are so fast […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Popular culture Pseudoscience Skepticism/critical thinking

Who knew? Tightening up requirements for waivers for school vaccine requirements increases vaccine uptake!

Michigan is a frustrating state to live in these days. Our state government has just shown itself to be epically incompetent in its handling of the Flint water crisis, which I’ve written about a couple of times before. Our legislature repealed our mandatory motorcycle helmet law, and as a result in this state motorcycles are […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Predatory open access journals and a crank mutual admiration society

I know I really shouldn’t peruse NaturalNews.com too often. It’s bad for my blood pressure, and, like many old farts on the wrong side of 50, I do have a touch of the ol’ hypertension. Reading Mike Adams’ blather risks raising that blood pressure either through causing me to laugh uproariously at the sheer idiocy […]

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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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Medicine

Brian Martin and Judy Wilyman: Promoting antivaccine pseudoscience as “dissent”

Yesterday, I wrote about what can only be described as an academic travesty. What riled me up sufficiently to lay a heapin’ helpin’ of not-so-Respectful Insolence on a graduate student named Judy Wilyman, her PhD thesis advisor Brian Martin, and the University of Wollongong was the fact that Wilyman is an antivaccine loon and the […]