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

I love it when an antivax “study” meant to show how “dirty” vaccines are backfires so spectacularly

It is an article of faith among antivaxers that vaccines are “dirty” and “contaminated.” So when antivaccine “scientists” try to show how contaminated vaccines are and wind up actually showing how pure they are, I laugh.

Categories
Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Religion Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Alternative medicine as religion, again

Over the years, I’ve often likened alternative medicine to a religion—or even a cult. Basically, it requires belief in a set of precepts that have at best little and more commonly no evidence to support them that is often accompanied by magical thinking that a god-substitute, be it nature, one’s body, or, of course, the […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Medicine Naturopathy Quackery

Choosing Wisely about homeopathy, supplements, and "detoxification" quackery

One of the major differences between science-based medicine (SBM) and alternative medicine—or, as they call it these days, “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM) or “integrative medicine”—is that SBM is always questioning itself, always reevaluating its practices. Related to this difference is that SBM does change its practice, discarding treatments that don’t work and incorporating those […]