Last week, there was a small chickenpox outbreak at a Marysville High School in my state. Unvaccinated students were sent home. Now antivaxers are protesting. Same as it ever was.
The NIH HEAL Initiative is designed to study “nonpharmacologic treatments for pain.” What it will really study will include heaping helpings of “integrative medicine” pseudoscience.
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Professor Fabrizio Benedetti is the most famous and almost certainly also the most influential researcher investigating the physiology of placebo effects. In a recent commentary, he asks whether placebo research is fueling quackery, as quacks co-opt its results. The answer to that question is certainly yes. A better question is: How do supporters of science counter the placebo narrative promoted by quacks, in which placebos represent the “power of the mind to heal the body”?
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Alberta Justice Terry Clackson has come under fire for racist language in his ruling acquitting David and Collet Stephan in the death of their child. Is the criticism deserved? Yes. His ruling was horrible on other grounds, but he added racism to the mix.
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Evee Clobes was a six month old who died due to SIDS. Unfortunately, antivaxers used the grief of her mother Caitlin to recruit her to their cause. It’s an all too common tactic, because antivaxers know that grieving mothers are their most potent messengers.
