Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Computers and social media Medicine Popular culture Pseudoscience Skepticism/critical thinking

How antimaskers co-opt techniques of scientific data analysis to generate COVID-19 propaganda

There’s a new paper out analyzing how antimask activists weaponize the tools of data visualization and scientific argumentation to produce convincing antimask propaganda. Antimaskers are claiming that it shows that they are more “scientific” than those supporting the consensus viewpoint with respect to COVID-19 and masks. What it really shows is that they are good at weaponizing the tools of data visualization and scientific arguments to come to the conclusions that they want to come to.

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Skepticism/critical thinking

Are any of the COVID-19 vaccines self-spreading, self-propagating, transmissible vaccines?

The short answer to the question in the title of this post is no. The long answer is that antivaxxers are now taking the trope of “shedding” to the new extreme of “self-spreading, self-propagating transmissible vaccines” and applying it to COVID-19 vaccines.

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery

Über-quack Joe Mercola falsely claims that “legally” the Moderna and Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines are not vaccines

Antivaxxers have been falsely claiming that the Moderna and Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines are “gene therapy,” not vaccines. Now über-quack Joe Mercola is falsely claiming that the vaccines are, from a legal standpoint, not vaccines.

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Autism Bad science Homeopathy Medicine

The antivaccine disinformation war against COVID-19 vaccines continues apace

Dr. Richard Moskovitz is a “homeopathic physician.” Unsurprisingly, he doesn’t like COVID-19 vaccines, either.

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Computers and social media Medicine Popular culture Pseudoscience Skepticism/critical thinking

“Censorship!”: The common bogus complaint of science deniers

Once more, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. cries “Censorship!” over efforts to counter COVID-19 and antivaccine disinformation. Hilarity ensues.