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Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Medicine Popular culture Pseudoscience

Justice Clackson and his miscarriage of justice in the acquittal of David and Collet Stephan

Crown appeals Justice Terry Clackson's decision
Ezekiel Stephan: A victim of his parents' antivaccine and pro-quackery ideology.

On September 19, in a retrial ordered by the Supreme Court of Canada, Alberta Justice Terry Clackson issued a ruling acquitting David and Collet Stephan of failing to provide the necessities of life to their son Ezekiel, whose bacterial meningitis they had chosen to treat with quackery instead of medicine, leading to his death in 2012. The news reports showed that this was a very bad decision, but you have to read Justice Clackson’s actual decision to see that it’s an even worse decision than the news reports indicate, full of bad medicine, bad science, and even a hint of racism.

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Pseudoscience Science

Harlem Vaccine Forum: Is Al Sharpton antivaccine?

Rev. Al Sharpton's Harlem Vaccine Forum

Rev. Al Sharpton is hosting the Harlem Vaccine Forum. Unfortunately, his “forum” looks like an antivaccine quackfest.

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine

Marysville High School has a chickenpox outbreak, and antivaxers don’t want their children kept home

Marysville Public Schools

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.

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Complementary and alternative medicine Integrative medicine Medicine Politics Pseudoscience Quackery

NIH HEAL Initiative: $1 billion to study “integrative” nonpharmacologic treatments for pain

NIH HEAL Initiative

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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Biology Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Integrative medicine Pseudoscience Quackery

Fabrizio Benedetti asks: “Does placebo research boost pseudoscience?”

Fabrizio Benedetti
Fabrizio Benedetti

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”?