Category: Bad science

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Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Medicine Popular culture Pseudoscience Quackery

An attempt to “Null”-ify Wikipedia on science

Wikipedia

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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Bad science Friday Woo Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery

Primo vascular system: An “explanation” for acupuncture meridians?

Primo vascular system

Acupuncturists have been trying to explain why no anatomic structure corresponds to meridians. Enter the primo vascular system, which circulates electricity in DNA. Or stem cells. Or something.

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Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Bioethics Medicine Pseudoscience

False analogies and pseudoscience as “moral arguments” against the use of fetal cell lines to manufacture vaccines

Using fetal cells to grow virus for vaccines

Antivaxers frequently object to the use of fetal cell lines to manufacture vaccines on “moral” grounds. Über-quack Joe Mercola lays down some astonishingly bad moral arguments based on pseudoscience.

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Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Medicine Science

Corvelva and “Vaccinegate”: Italian antivaxers produce a dubious “scientific report” on fetal DNA in vaccines

Corvelva

The Italian antivaccine group Corvelva published a really bad “scientific report” claiming fetal DNA in vaccines is dangerous based on a dubious next generation sequencing analysis whose methods are not described. It’s not. To believe its claims, you have to believe that DNA can do anything.

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Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Medicine Popular culture Pseudoscience

Justice Clackson and his miscarriage of justice in the acquittal of David and Collet Stephan

Crown appeals Justice Terry Clackson's decision
Ezekiel Stephan: A victim of his parents' antivaccine and pro-quackery ideology.

On September 19, in a retrial ordered by the Supreme Court of Canada, Alberta Justice Terry Clackson issued a ruling acquitting David and Collet Stephan of failing to provide the necessities of life to their son Ezekiel, whose bacterial meningitis they had chosen to treat with quackery instead of medicine, leading to his death in 2012. The news reports showed that this was a very bad decision, but you have to read Justice Clackson’s actual decision to see that it’s an even worse decision than the news reports indicate, full of bad medicine, bad science, and even a hint of racism.