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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Politics Popular culture

The GOP was the antivax party before Ron DeSantis, but now he’s turbocharged its resistance

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has apparently decided that riding the antivax wave is his key to the GOP nomination. This wouldn’t have represented a viable strategy if the GOP hadn’t become the antivax party over the last decade or so.

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Clinical trials Medicine Skepticism/critical thinking

The Cochrane mask fiasco: Does EBM predispose to COVID contrarianism?

Earlier this month the Cochrane Collaborative was forced to walk back the conclusions of a review by Tom Jefferson et al that had been spun in the media as proving that “masks don’t work.” Tom Jefferson himself has been problematic about vaccines for a long time, but the rot goes deeper. What is it about the evidence-based medicine paradigm that results in misleading conclusions?

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Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Medicine Skepticism/critical thinking

“Can colleges mandate Ozempic?” Clever or clueless analogy? You be the judge!

Dr. Vinay Prasad compares college booster mandates to mandating Ozempic in obese students. How are these things different from each other? Let me count the ways. How disingenuous is Dr. Prasad? Let me count the ways.

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Antivaccine nonsense Homeopathy Medicine

Dr. Tess Lawrie expands from ivermectin quackery to homeopathy

Tess Lawrie has been promoting ivermectin for COVID-19 for two and a half years. Of late, she has become more of a general multipurpose quack, promoting ivermectin to treat cancer. Now she’s promoting homeopathy for COVID and long COVID while a Research Fellow at St. Mary’s University Twickenham. What does this tell us about medicine?

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine

Alan Lash recycles an old prepandemic antivax trope

Everything old is new yet again, as Brownstone Institute’s Alan Lash recycles old antivax tropes about doctors supposedly being in the thrall of big pharma and therefore untrustworthy.