Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Autism Biology Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Pseudoscience Religion Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Religious fundamentalists try to prove fetal DNA in vaccines causes autism and fail

There are some myths, bits of misinformation, or lies about medicine that I like to refer to zombie quackery. The reasons are obvious. Like at the end of a horror movie, just when you think the myth is finally dead, its rotting hand rises out of the dirt to grab your leg and drag you […]

Categories
Biology Cancer Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine History Skepticism/critical thinking

Medical marijuana and the new herbalism, part 2: The cult of “cannabis cures cancer”

About five weeks ago a month ago, I finally wrote the post I had been promising to write for months before about medical marijuana. At the time, I also promised that there would be follow-up posts. Like Dug the Dog seeing a squirrel, I kept running into other topics that kept me from revisiting the […]

Categories
Biology Complementary and alternative medicine Evolution Intelligent design/creationism Medicine Paranormal Pseudoscience Quackery Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Deepak Chopra issues a hilarious “challenge” to James Randi over consciousness

Deepak Chopra isn’t very happy right now. In fact, he appears downright pissed off right now, particularly at skeptics, so much so that he’s issued a hilariously fatuous “challenge” to James Randi (a.k.a.) The Amazing Randi on You Tube entitled Deepak Chopra’s One Million Dollar Challenge to Skeptics: Yes, apparently with The Amazing Meeting (a.k.a. […]

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Autism Biology Complementary and alternative medicine Computers and social media Medicine Quackery

A few holiday medical links while Orac (sort of) relaxes

Regular readers might be wondering why my output was—shall we say?—less extensive last week than it usually is. I even skipped a weekday and then followed it up with a recycled post from my not-so-super-secret other blog, altered to be a bit more, yes, Insolent. The answer is a single word: Grants. I had a […]

Categories
Biology Medicine Politics Popular culture Science Skepticism/critical thinking

How cute. Orac has been targeted by his first Change.org petition.

I had originally planned on writing about a different topic today, but, as is so often the case in blogging, something came up that caught my attention, much as the errant thought of a squirrel distracts Dug the Dog. Well, actually, I had to go to an evening meeting for work last night and by […]