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Entertainment/culture Medicine Popular culture Science Television

Atomic cold cream

Somehow I don’t think any cosmetics company today could get away with doing an experiment like this to prove how well its cold cream cleans the most dirt and makeup residue from a model’s skin. I’d also really love a copy of the “Atomic Test Booklet” that people could mail the company to request. You’d […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Science Skepticism/critical thinking

“There must be a reason”

For a change of pace, I want to step back from medicine for this post, although, as you will see (I hope), the study I’m going to discuss has a great deal of relevance to the topics covered regularly on this blog. One of the most frustrating aspects of being a skeptic and championing critical […]

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Anti-Semitism Biology History Holocaust Holocaust denial Intelligent design/creationism Pseudoscience Science Skepticism/critical thinking World War II

Creationism X Holocaust denial = stupidity2

Seventy years ago today, the massed armies of the Third Reich poured across the Polish border, marking the official start of World War II. It would require nearly six years, millions of deaths, and the combined might of the Soviet Union, United States, Great Britain, and numerous other nations to bring the war to an […]

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Cancer Medicine Science

Scientists are only two years from developing a cure for breast cancer?

Want to know what will start my teeth grinding when I read it in a newspaper? That’s easy. It’s headlines like this one, which appeared two days ago in The Telegraph: Scientists two years from developing ‘potential cure’ for breast cancer The subtitle was even worse: British scientists could be just two years away from […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Evolution Medicine Pseudoscience Science Skepticism/critical thinking

In which Orac defends Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum…

I realize that I’m possibly stepping into proverbial lion’s den with this one, but a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do. As you may recall, former ScienceBlogs bloggers Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum (and current Discover Magazine bloggers) recently released a book called Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future. […]