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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Are unvaccinated children more healthy than vaccinated children?

There are many myths that undergird antivaccine beliefs, such as the myth that vaccines cause autism, autoimmune diseases, diabetes, sudden infant death syndrome, and basically anything antivaccinationists like to blame on them. Basically, if you believe antivaccinationists, there’s nothing bad thta vaccines can’t do to children. The flip side of this myth is perhaps the […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Medicine

Homeopathic nosodes: A clinical trial of magic

As hard as it is for me to believe, I’ve been writing about homeopathy for more than a decade now. Regular readers, of course, know that homeopathy is quackery, utter pseudoscience based on prescientific vitalism based on two “laws”: the Law of Similars and the Law of Infinitesimals. The former states that, to relieve a […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Medicine Naturopathy Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Defending Dr. Bob Sears: On the affinity between “integrative medicine” and antivaccine views

It’s been nearly three weeks since we learned that the Medical Board of California had initiated disciplinary proceedings against the most famous antivaccine physician not named Andrew Wakefield. I’m referring, of course, to “Dr. Bob” Sears, author of The Vaccine Book: Making the Right Decision for Your Child and creator of an “alternate” vaccine schedule […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Medicine Naturopathy Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Quackademic medicine marches on, Stanford edition

One of the most pernicious changes in medicine that’s occurred over the last 25 years or so is the infiltration of what I like to refer to as “quackademic medicine.” It’s a term that was, as far as I know, coined by Dr. Robert W. Donnell in 2009 to describe the infiltration of pseudoscience and […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Medicine Quackery

A “holistic” doctor throws a hilariously disingenuous tantrum over board recertification

In the early days of 2016, my attention was drawn to a local antivaccine doctor of whom I’d heard before but never really paid much attention to. What caught my eye was a blog exchange between this “holistic” family practitioner and former Scienceblogs blogger, friend, and local internist Peter Lipson over this physician’s blog posts […]