Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine

Professor Stephen Bustin schools Andrew Wakefield, and I enjoy

I suppose that while I’m on another roll writing about the antivaccine movement I should just embrace it. I was going to start this post out again with one of my periodic laments about how blogging about the antivaccine movement has taken over and crowded out other topics that I like to write about. I […]

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Quackery

And now Anne Frank is dragged into the antivaccine picture

I guess that the antivaccinationists didn’t listen to me last time when I suggested that maybe—just maybe—using Holocaust analogies when discussing autism and vaccines is just a wee bit inappropriate, such an overblown analogy that it spreads far more heat than light. At least, Kent Heckenlively didn’t, and, because his invocation of the Nazi card […]

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine

The “I told you so” fantasy, or: The fallacy of future vindication

Cranks love to fantasize that their ideas will be vindicated in the future. The fantasy almost never becomes reality.

Categories
Anti-Semitism Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine History Hitler Zombie Holocaust Holocaust denial Medicine Quackery World War II

Can antivaccinationists knock it off with the autism Holocaust analogies already?

It’s very clear that many antivaccinationists hate autistic children. The language they use to describe them makes that very clear. Such children are “damaged” (by vaccines, of course); the parents’ real children were “stolen” from them (by vaccines); they are “toxic” (from vaccines); the “light left their eyes” (due to vaccines). Autism is an “epidemic,” […]

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Friday Woo Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Who can quack the loudest?

Over the years this blog’s been in existence, I’ve fallen into a habit in which I tend to like to finish off the week taking on a bit of science (well, usually pseudoscience) that is either really out there, really funny, or in general not as heavy as, for example, writing about someone like Stanislaw […]