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Bioethics Biology Medicine Politics Science Surgery

Animals in research and medical training

Over the weekend, some readers sent me a link to a story that, presumably, they thought would be of interest to me, given that I graduated from the University Michigan Medical School back in the late 1980s. Specifically, it’s a report that U. of M. has halted the use of dogs in its surgical training: […]

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

Your Friday Dose of Woo: A bio-photon here, a bio-photon there…whatever a bio-photon is

Let’s try this again. Two days ago, I tried to get away from blogging about antivaccinationists. I even succeeded for one day. Unfortunately, that was all, because J.B. Handley and his crew of antivaccine loons cooked up a really big, really deceptive, and really desperate gambit that just couldn’t go unremarked upon. Thus was I […]

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

Choprawoo and magical thinking: Two crappy tastes that taste crappy together

Unfortunately, as we have been dreading for the last four months or so since her relapse was diagnosed, my mother-in-law passed away from breast cancer in hospice. She died peacefully, with my wife and the rest of her family at her side. As you might expect, I do not much feel like blogging, and even […]

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Biology Intelligent design/creationism Medicine Science Skepticism/critical thinking Surgery

200 years since Darwin’s birth, what about medicine?

Today is Darwin Day. But, more than that, it is a very special Darwin Day in that it is the 200th anniversary of the birth of evolutionary biologist Charles Darwin. This day is meant to celebrate not just the life, but especially the discoveries, of Charles Darwin. His theory of evolution by natural selection, is […]

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Anti-Semitism Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine History Holocaust Holocaust denial Intelligent design/creationism Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Science Skepticism/critical thinking World War II

Bishop Richard Williamson, Holocaust denial, and the problem of “recantation” by cranks

Because of the fallout from the revelation by Brian Deer that very likely Andrew Wakefield, hero of the antivaccine movement but, alas for his worshipers, one of the most dishonest and incompetent scientists who ever lived, had almost certainly falsified data for his infamous 1998 Lancet paper that launched a decade-long anti-MMR hysteria that shows […]