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Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Cancer Medicine Politics Quackery

Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski and the problem of COVID-19 misinformation

The 45 year career of cancer quack Stanislaw Burzynski, whom multiple medical authorities including the Texas Medical Board and FDA have failed to stop, serves as a warning about how difficult it will be to discipline physicians for spreading COVID-19 disinformation.

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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.

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Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

COVID-19 vaccines, prion disease, and Alzheimer’s: Another old antivax lie is new again

Antivax immunologist J. Bart Classen recently published a paper claiming that mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines can cause prion disease leading to neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s dementia. What are prions, and can these vaccines cause prion disease? Unsurprisingly, Classen is just wildly speculating based on highly implausible biology.

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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.

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Medicine Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

The “only 6%” gambit: The latest viral COVID-19 disinformation

While Orac’s been away, there’s arisen a new bit of COVID-19 disinformation that deceptively claims that “only 6%” of the deaths attributed to COVID-19 were really due to coronavirus. It turns out that this is QAnon disinformation.