Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Autism Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Rain man? Or: Does rainfall cause autism?

I guess Barack Obama’s mad hypnotic powers worked. One non-political thing that this election has reminded me of is that when you’ve been blogging as long as I have (nearly four years now–almost as long as a Presidential term!–assuming you’re good and have found a niche in the blogosphere, you can become one of the […]

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

Why did someone have to kill my election buzz?

OK, even though I have said time and time again that I rarely do any posts that are strictly political in nature, mainly because political bloggers are a dime a dozen, great political bloggers are rare, and I don’t consider myself anything better than an at best passable political blogger. However, when politics intersects my […]

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Is the earth still circling the sun?

I ask this question because I have seen something I have never seen before, something so earth-shattering that I wonder if the very axis of the earth has shifted, something so incredible that I have to pinch myself to make sure that I’m not living some unbelievably bizarre dream. I half expect the heavens to […]

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

David Kirby admits that mercury in vaccines is no longer “the smoking gun”

Longtime readers of this blog know that my original exposure to antivaccination conspiracy theories first occurred in the context of the now pseudoscientific and discredited hypothesis that somehow the mercury in the thimerosal preservative that used to be used in vaccines was the cause of autism. Despite the backpedaling among antivaccination zealots such as J. […]

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Autism Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Dr. Rashid Buttar wants you to ask him a question

You remember Dr. Rashid Buttar, don’t you? He’s that blight on North Carolina’s medical establishment, known for his “transdermal chelation therapy” that he’s unable to demonstrate as being able to be absorbed through the skin, much less chelate anything (arguably a good thing, actually, because at least it probably doesn’t hurt anyone, as a real […]