Category: Popular culture

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Politics Popular culture

Mike Adams rants about provaccine messaging by the CDC as though it were a BAD thing

Provaccine message

Right wing cranks at Judicial Watch used a FOIA request to find a CDC plan to promote COVID-19 vaccination with provaccine messaging. Hilarity ensued when Mike Adams found out.

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Medicine Popular culture Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Is the lab leak conspiracy theory dead?

Lab leak is a lot like the parrot in this sketch.
"Lab leak" is a lot like the parrot in this sketch, and conspiracy theorists a lot like the pet store owner.

Two new studies published last month strongly support a natural zoonotic origin for COVID-19 centered at the wet market in Wuhan, China. Naturally, lab leak proponents soberly considered this new evidence and thought about changing their minds. Just kidding! They doubled down on the conspiracy mongering, because of course they did.

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Politics Popular culture Science

Jeffrey Tucker: The antivaccine movement and the far right

Jeffrey Tucker
Jeffrey Tucker (credit: Greg Skidmore via Wikipedia/Creative Commons)

Jeffery Tucker, founder of the Brownstone Institute, is a far right wing Neo-Confederate hack. What does this say about the confluence of the far right and antivax?

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Computers and social media Medicine Politics Popular culture Science Skepticism/critical thinking

John Ioannidis and Vinay Prasad team up to lecture social media about “obsessive criticism”

Irony meter meets obsessive criticism
Orac never thought he'd ever be using an irony meter meme in a discussion of something that Prof. Ioannidis has written, but here we are.

Formerly respectable academics John Ioannidis and Vinay Prasad published a complaint about “obsessive criticism” on social media. Hilarity ensued, and many irony meters were reduced to sparking, smoking, sputtering ruin.

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Popular culture Pseudoscience

When “old school” antivaxxers meet the “new school” antivaxxers

"Beter Way" old school antivaxxer vs. new school antivaxxers
Antivaxxers like Dr. Robert Malone (second from left, the one who looks like Kenny Rogers) refuse to defend the childhood vaccination schedule at the Better Way Conference 2022 in Bath, England. Geert Vanden Bossche is the one sitting next to him adjusting his glasses and wishing he were somewhere else than with all these rabid antivaxxers.

An old school “vaccines cause autism” antivaxxer hosted new COVID-19 antivaxxers at an antivax conference last month. Although one new antivaxxer, Geert Vanden Bossche, was discomfited and pushed back against old antivax tropes, the rest joined Del Bigtree in spewing longstanding antivax tropes.