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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

On vaccines, immune to reason

It’s rare that one sees an editorial this spot on, but it happened a couple of days ago in The Washington Post: The debate over vaccine litigation has thus shifted from a presumption of innocence to a presumption of guilt. While the number of major studies that have failed to find any substantive link between […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Blogging Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

The mercury militia silences a voice of reason

Today is a very sad day in the autism blogosphere. The news I am going to discuss saddens me and should sadden anyone concerned with autism, particularly in combating the antivaccination hysteria and the outright quackery that flows from it promulgated by so many these days, from J. B. Handley to Jenny McCarthy, who couldn’t […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Entertainment/culture Medicine Quackery Television

A credulous treatment of the mercury militia on PBS

The Skeptical Surfer informs me of a rather disturbing programming decision by PBS: I first caught wind of the autism film “Beautiful Son” through the surfing community. Surf filmmaker Don King has an autistic son. Being a filmmaker, Don always has a video camera at hand and has documented his “journey” of discovering that his […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Friday Woo Humor Intelligent design/creationism Medicine Paranormal Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

A bonus dose of woo: Skeptico’s really stepped in it this time

Woo-meisters will not be pleased. While perusing this week’s Skeptics’ Circle, I was reminded of something that I had meant to post about a couple of days ago. I don’t know how he did it or where he got it, but somehow he has found the Holy of Holies for woos everywhere. He found The […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Blogging Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Science Skepticism/critical thinking

The Chicago Tribune’s Julie Deardorff and the mercury militia: Do newspapers have a responsibility for policing their blogs?

One development that will increasingly pose an interesting and perhaps uncomfortable question for newspapers is the increasing addition of blogs run under the banner of newspapers. I’m not sure if it’s cluelessness about the blogosphere leading newspapers to think that they can have bloggers write whatever they want under the newspaper’s banner and not have […]