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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine

Autism prevalence increases to 1 in 36, and antivaxxers freak out…again

The CDC updated its estimates for the prevalence of autism spectrum disorders. Predictably, antivaxxers blame the increasing prevalence of ASDs reported, particularly in Black children, on “environmental factors,” which is antivax code for, “Vaccines are to blame.”

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

A climate scientist becomes a denialist arguing vaccine pseudoscience

The human mind is amazing in its ability to compartmentalize. Many are the times when I’ve come across people who seem reasonable in every other way but who cling tightly to one form of pseudoscience or another. On the other hand, as I’ve noticed time and time again, people whose minds have a proclivity for […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Medicine Politics Skepticism/critical thinking

The antivaccine movement resurrects the zombie that is the “autism epidemic” (2014 edition)

As I just mentioned a week ago, there used to be a time when I dreaded Autism Awareness Month, which begins tomorrow. The reason was simple. Several years ago to perhaps as recently as three years ago, I could always count on a flurry of stories about autism towards the end of March and the […]

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Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Get out the popcorn! This internecine war among antivaccinationists is getting interesting (part 5)

There’s a general rule that whenever you see two enemies fighting with each other that you should generally just let them. Of course, some might argue, as Gandalf did about Saruman and Sauron, that the winner of the fight would emerge stronger and free of doubt, making him harder to conquer. Fortunately, I don’t think […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Quackery

Get out the popcorn! This internecine war among antivaccinationists is getting interesting (part 4)

I’m running out of popcorn again. I know I’ve been writing a lot about the latest internecine war among cranks. It’s a battle royale whose first shot occurred when everybody’s favorite Boy Wonder “reporter” betrayed his mentors with a missive published on a hive of scum and quackery even more wretched that the hive of […]