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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Science denial: A form of conspiracy theory

Regular readers of this blog know that many forms of quackery and science denial have conspiracy theories associated with them, but a further examination suggests that all science denial a form of conspiracy theory. In the middle of a deadly pandemic, it is a form of conspiracy theory with potentially deadly consequences.

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Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Medicine Popular culture Pseudoscience Quackery

An attempt to “Null”-ify Wikipedia on science

Love it or hate it, Wikipedia is a main go-to rough and ready source of information for millions of people. Although I’ve had my problems with Wikipedia and used to ask whether it could provide reliable information on medicine and, in particular, alternative medicine and vaccines, given that anyone can edit it, I now conclude that Wikipedia must be doing OK, at least in these areas. After all, some of the highest profile promoters of alternative and “integrative” medicine hate Wikipedia, to the point of attacking it and concocting conspiracy theories about it.

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Antivaccine nonsense Skepticism/critical thinking

“I’m a rational theorist, not a conspiracy theorist.”

Conspiracy theorists hate being called conspiracy theorists. After they try to rebrand themselves as “rational theorists,” hilarity ensues.

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Bad science Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Placebos without deception: Misinformation that never dies

He’s ba-ack! Longtime “integrative medicine” apologist and exaggerator of the “power of placebos” Ted Kaptchuk is promting misinformation again in an op-ed in The New York Times.

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Antivaccine nonsense Biology Cancer Medicine Science

Return of the revenge of “vaccines permanently alter your DNA”

In a new twist on the “vaccines permanently alter your DNA” trope that antivaxxers love, a microbiologist named Kevin McKernan is falsely claiming that contaminating plasmid DNA from COVID-19 vaccines can get into the nucleus during cell division and “permanently alter your DNA” to horrible effect.