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Antivaccine nonsense Evolution History Holocaust denial Intelligent design/creationism Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Science Skepticism/critical thinking

The “vindication of all kooks” corollary to the principle of crank magnetism

A couple of years ago, fellow ScienceBlogger Mark Hoofnagle over at Denialism Blog coined a most excellent term to describe all manners of pseuodscience, quackery, and crankery. The term, “crank magnetism,” describes the tendency of cranks not to mind it when they see crankery in others. More specifically, it describes how cranks of one variety […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Entertainment/culture Medicine Television

The resident anti-vaccine reporter at CBS News strikes again

I’m not infrequently asked why the myth that vaccines cause autism and other anti-vaccine myths are so stubbornly resistant to the science that time and time again fails to support them. Certainly useful celebrity idiots like Jenny McCarthy are one reason. So, too, are anti-vaccine propaganda websites and blogs such as Age of Autism and […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Entertainment/culture Medicine Television

Stop CBS from airing anti-vaccine ads on its Times Square JumboTron

I tell ya. I take a weekend off from this blog, and what do I find on Sunday night when I sit back down to take a look and see if there’s anything I want to blog about? Damn if those anti-vaccine loons aren’t pulling a fast one while I’m not looking. It turns out […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Quackery Religion

Joe Mercola plays the religion card against vaccines

Remember Helen Ratajczak? A few months ago, CBS News’ resident anti-vaccine reporter Sharyl Attkisson was promoting Ratajczak’s incompetent “analysis” of evidence that she views as implicating vaccines in the pathogenesis of autism entitled Theoretical aspects of autism: causes–A Review (which is available in all its misinforming glory here). I applied some not-so-Respectful Insolence to the […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

R.I.P. Bernadine Healy

It came as a shock to me to find out yesterday that former director of the American Red Cross and former director of the NIH Bernadine Healy died. Chalk it up to my simply being ignorant of the fact, but I didn’t know, or had forgotten, that she had brain cancer. Interestingly, she had had […]