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Antivaccine nonsense Biology Medicine Popular culture Pseudoscience Skepticism/critical thinking

Cries the antivaxxer: “Vegans, don’t take a COVID-19 vaccine because it uses horseshoe crab blood!”

Antivaxxers are now urging vegans not to use a COVID-19 vaccine because blood from horseshoe crabs will be used in its manufacture. This is no different than their weaponization of beliefs against other vaccine ingredients.

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Bad science Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery

The astroturf effort promoting hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19 continues apace

A week and a half ago, a “study” published on “HCQ Trial” by an anonymous source claiming to be a group of PhD scientists went viral. It claimed that countries that used hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19 had a 79% lower fatality rate than those who didn’t. It was horrible science and quickly debunked on Twitter by several epidemiologists. That didn’t stop it from going viral. Disinformation like this during a pandemic is one of the most dangerous challenges we face.

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Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Cancer Computers and social media Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery

Joe Mercola: Celebrating 23 years of promoting quackery and antivaccine misinformation

“Dr.” Joe Mercola just celebrated 23 years of his website. It’s actually been 23 years of promoting quackery and antivaccine misinformation, culminating in a lot of COVID-19 disinformation.

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Politics Popular culture Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Sputnik-V: A Russian con job on its COVID-19 vaccine

Yesterday, Russia announced its approval of Sputnik-V, what Vladimir Putin dubs as the first COVID-19 vaccine. It’s propaganda, a con job, given that no data were presented and there have been no phase 3 trials.

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Medicine Science Skepticism/critical thinking

On “doing your own research”

Ethan Siegel at Forbes argues that you “must not ‘do your own research.’” While the title grates, Siegel is correct that most of us are not really capable of “doing our own research” about most scientific and medical questions because we lack the necessary background. We must therefore be humble and be very, very careful about “doing our own research.”