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Antivaccine nonsense Pseudoscience Quackery Religion

Another Waldorf School, another outbreak. Quelle surprise!

There’s been an outbreak of chickenpox in North Carolina. Guess where it happened? Yes, at a Waldorf school. Quelle surprise! Waldorf Schools are a danger to the children who attend them and the communities in which they are located.

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Complementary and alternative medicine Integrative medicine Quackery

Is there such a thing as the “placebome”?

As results from randomized clinical trials show that alternative medicine is nothing more than placeboe, quacks like to argue that they are “harnessing the power of placebo” with their methods and that placebos have real healing effect. They’ve even gone so far as to make up a genomics-based concept: The placebome. But is there such a thing as the placebome?

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Bad science Bioethics Popular culture Pseudoscience Quackery

Barbara Loe Fisher: Well baby visits are vaccine battlegrounds!

The grande dame of the antivaccine movement, Barbara Loe Fisher, is ranting again. This time, she is peddling both misinformed consent about vaccines and likening her struggle to social justice movements of the past as she portrays well baby visits as “vaccine battlegrounds” instigated by the AAP.

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Popular culture Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

The ACIP, Paul Offit, and harassment by antivaxers

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) is the committee that decides on the CDC-recommended vaccine schedule. Naturally, antivaxers don’t like it—or any scientist on it. Or any vaccine advocate, for that matter. Paul Offit is a particular target of their ire, and they can be quite scary.

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Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Medicine Pseudoscience Skepticism/critical thinking

Wake up, Sheeple! Or how a dubious sheep study is being spun by antivaxers

A group of Spanish veterinary researchers claim that aluminum adjuvants in vaccines make sheep sick. To prove it, they injected a small number of sheep with massive amounts of adjuvants and vaccines and did a whole lot of comparisons, including behavioral observations with a large subjective component. Surprise! They think they’ve found something. Less surprising, the antivaxers like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. are pointing to the study as evidence of how dangerous vaccines are.