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Antivaccine nonsense Computers and social media Medicine Politics Popular culture Pseudoscience Quackery

Jessica Biel: The latest celebrity antivaxer comes out

Actress Jessica Biel Joined Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to lobby California lawmakers to reject SB 276, a bill to stop bogus vaccine exemptions. Despite her claims that she’s “not antivax,” lobbying with a long time antivax crank like RFK, Jr. and expressing to legislators your belief that vaccines are both dangerous and ineffective are pretty much the definition of antivax.

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Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Medicine Popular culture

Daily Beast reporter Jackie Kucinich falls prey to the perils of reporting on antivaxer Del Bigtree

So I’m finally back. As many of you surmised, I needed surgery; I had it two and a half weeks ago; and I’m back. I’ll say little more than that it was spine surgery and that no fusion was involved, hence my relatively rapid return to work. I must say, a lot of things happened […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Bad science Bioethics Skepticism/critical thinking

In which Orac uncloaks and gets to meet his heroes Drs. Richard Pan and Peter Hotez

A week and a half ago, Orac got to travel to San Diego to participate in a panel discussion about the antivaccine movement. Even better, he got to meet two heroes of his, California Senator Richard Pan and Dr. Peter Hotez.

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Popular culture Pseudoscience

Harassment of doctors and grieving mothers: A feature, not a bug, of the antivaccine movement

Harassment of its opponents is a feature, not a bug, of the antivaccine movement, even if the victims are grieving mothers. The idea is to harass and intimidate their opponents into silence.

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Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Bioethics Medicine Popular culture Quackery

Peter Gøtzsche and the antivaxers

Recently, it was noted that Peter Gøtzsche, formerly of Cochrane Nordic, was featured on the speaker list for an antivaccine quackfest. Two days later, he announced that he would not be speaking there. So what happened and why did Prof. Gøtzsche agree to speak at an antivax conference in the first place?