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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Pseudoscience Quackery

Representative Dan Burton: Abusing his power to influence the outcome of the Autism Omnibus hearings?

It’s been a while since I mentioned the Autism Omnibus hearings. The Omnibus proceeding is the culmination of all the legal cases brought to the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program by nearly 5,000 families who “feel” that their children’s autism was caused by vaccines. Many, but not all, of the plaintiffs blame the mercury in the […]

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Announcements Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Intelligent design/creationism Medicine Paranormal Pareidolia Pseudoscience Quackery Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Christmas is coming, and so is the Skeptics’ Circle

It’s almost here. No, not Christmas, although that’s almost here too. what I’m talking about is the fast-approaching 76th Meeting of the Skeptics’ Circle, which is due to land at Aardvarchaelogy on Thursday, December 20, right in time for the holidays. (And what better time to indulge in a serious dose of skepticism than in […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Friday Woo Medicine Physics Pseudoscience Quackery Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Your Friday Dose of Woo: It’s a marvelous night for a moondance…

I have to confess, the ol’ Folder of Woo was looking a little thin this week. No, it’s not that I’m running out of topics (a.k.a. targets) for my usual Friday jaunt into the wacky world of woo. Far from it. It’s just that, in the run-up to writing this, perusing the odd stuff therein […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

The return of Dana Ullman, homeopathic apologist

Oh, no, not again. Respectful Insolence™ has been invaded over the last few days by a particularly idiotic and clueless homeopath named Sunil Sharma, who’s infested the comments of a post about how U.K. homeopaths are complaining about all of us mean skeptics who have the temerity to point out the mind-numbingly obvious about homeopathy, […]

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

“Academic freedom” for pseudoscience?

Readers may have noticed (or maybe they haven’t) that I haven’t commented at all on the Guillermo Gonzalez case. As you may recall, Gonzalez is an astronomer at Iowa State University, as well as advocate of “intelligent design” creationism. In May 2007, ISU denied tenure to Gonzalez. Not surprisingly, the ID movement in general and […]