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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Medicine Quackery

What do polio, pesticides, and cell phone radiation have in common?

No matter how you slice it, I’ve been at this blogging thing a long time. it’s been over seven years now. It’s been even longer than that, though, because before that cold gray Saturday afternoon in September when I started farting around with Blogger and ended giving birth to the first iteration of Respectful Insolence, […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Another very bad day for antivaccinationists: Yet another study fails to find a link between thimerosal and autism

A little more than three months ago there came to pass a very bad day for antivaccinationists. On that day, in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine appeared a study that was powerful evidence that vaccines are not associated with adverse neuropsychiatric outcomes in children. Not surprisingly, the usual suspects in the mercury militia […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Yet another really bad day for antivaccinationists: This time there’s no link between the MMR and autism

I hadn’t planned on blogging about vaccines again for a while. Really, I hadn’t. Even I realize the risk of beating the proverbial dead horse just one time too often. Also, It seems that I’ve been writing about antivaccination loons a lot lately, even more than usual. However, aside from a prime time spot for […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Intelligent design/creationism Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Media reporting on pseudoscience: When should a newspaper abandon the “report both sides” mantra?

In response to my post yesterday castigating J. B. Handley of Generation Rescue for hypocritically accusing the American Academy of Pediatrics of “manipulating the media” when manipulating the media is Generation Rescue’s raison d’être, Mike the Mad Biologist turned me on to a rather fascinating article in the New York Times by its Public Editor […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Entertainment/culture Medicine Politics Popular culture Quackery Television

The Hannah Poling case: Autism rebranded again

Damn you, mercury militia. I had had another topic entirely in mind for this week’s post, but, as happens far too often, news events have overtaken me in the form of a story that was widely reported towards the end of last week. It was all over the media on Thursday evening and Friday, showing […]