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

It’s official! Brian Hooker’s “reanalysis” of MMR data is retracted.

These things always seem to happen on Friday. Well, not really. It’s probably just confirmation bias, but it seems that a lot of things I’d like to blog about happen on a Friday. That leaves me the choice of either breaking my unofficial rule not to blog on the weekend or waiting until Monday, when […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Bioethics Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Popular culture Quackery

When the outbreaks occur, they’ll start in California, 2014 edition

Countering the misinformation regularly promulgated by the antivaccine movement, be it antivaccinationists who are completely off the deep end, like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the crew at the antivaccine crank blog Age of Autism, or that epitome of the Dunning-Kruger effect mixed with an annoying self-absorption and coffee klatch vibe (that is when it’s not […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine

Antivaccine cranks try to create Vaccine Injury Awareness Month. Everyone either yawns or laughs.

Normally, these days I greet the month of October with a mixture of anticipation and dread. The anticipation stems from October’s position as Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Now that somehow I’ve managed to have a variety of responsibilities with respect to how breast cancer is managed at our cancer institute, suddenly I find that I’m […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

The annals of “I’m not anti-vaccine,” part 12: What’s the worst vaccine analogy you’ve heard from antivaccinationists?

Orac is feeling a little under the weather. I appear to have caught some respiratory crud that’s going around, which, fortunately, isn’t so bad that I can’t go to work, particularly given that today is a lab/office day, but unfortunately made me feel too tired last night to create one of my usual peerless examples […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Science

The annals of “I’m not anti-vaccine,” part 11: Vaccination portrayed as rape

One of the things you can say to someone who is antivaccine that will really tick them off is to “call it like you see it” and call them antivaccine. Sure, there are a few antivaccine activists who are unashamed of being antivaccine, but most antivaccinationists, sensing that society in general quite correctly takes a […]