Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Politics

Physicians are their own worst enemies with respect to misinformation

A recent study found that physicians and scientists who are perceived as “experts” are prevalent within the antivax community and more influential because of their status as physicians and scientists. Why do physicians continue to tolerate antivax quacks within our ranks?

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Computers and social media Medicine Popular culture Pseudoscience Quackery

Criticism and quality control ≠ “Censorship and defamation”

Minerva published an op-ed disguised as a “study” decrying “censorship and defamation.” It was really just criticism and quality control, but the usual suspects are all over it as evidence of evil.

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Quackery

“Innovation.” You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Quacks delude themselves that they are brave mavericks who are being persecuted for “innovation.” That’s why they attack scientific authority that tells them they are quacks and cranks as “corrupt” and “unimaginative.”

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Quackery

A female physician responds to hack journalist Paul Thacker

After being forced through legal threats to “apologize” by a bunch of quacks and attacked by a hack journalist, Dr. Allison Neitzel tells her side of the story with respect to the hack. It’s a sad story, but I would much rather have her in my profession than the quacks who threatened her.

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Antivaxxers attack scientific consensus as a “manufactured construct”

Neil deGrasse Tyson invoked the concept of a scientific consensus while supporting vaccines in his debate with Del Bigtree. Why was his statement about how “individual scientists don’t matter” compared to scientific consensus so triggering to antivaxxers? Why do antivaxxers reject the very concept of a scientific consensus and promote a hyper-individualistic view of how science should be conducted?