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Antivaccine nonsense History Medicine Pseudoscience

The annals of “I’m not antivaccine,” part 26: “No, I’m not an ‘vaccine safety’ advocate”

Many are the antivaxers who claim they aren’t antivaccine. Few are the antivaxers who are honest enough to openly proclaim they are antivaccine.

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Autism Bioethics Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Another antivaccine paper bites the dust

Christopher Shaw and Lucija Tomljenovic are known for producing dubious scientific studies in the service of antivaccine pseudoscience. Last month, they published a paper purporting to show that aluminum adjuvant causes neuroinflammation in mice that was roundly criticized for poor experimental design and manipulated images. Guess what? It’s soon to be retracted.

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

False balance in reporting the case of a local mother jailed for contempt of court for reneging on an agreement to vaccinate her child

Rachel Bredow is antivaccine and doesn’t want her children vaccinated. Her ex-husband disagrees. When Ms. Bredow violated a court order to vaccinate her child, she was thrown into jail for contempt of court. Unfortunately, our local media have not exactly covered themselves in glory covering this story.

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

Antivaxers on Twitter: Fake news and Twitter bots

A new analysis reveals that there are antivaccine bots on Twitter. Why am I not surprised?

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Biology Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Torturing more mice in the name of antivaccine pseudoscience: PubPeer versus antivaxers

Last week, I wrote about a truly execrable bit of science by Christopher Shaw and Lucija Tomljenovic purporting to show that aluminum adjuvants cause brain inflammation, which causes autism. Since then, I’ve learned that, not only is it bad science, but that there are red flags about several of the figures to raise the specter of fraud. This might not be just bad science. It might be fraudulent science. The only way to resolve this would be for the authors to release the original full resolution images of their blots.