It’s Thanksgiving Day here in the U.S., and, despite the crappy economy, there are still things to be thankful for. For instance, skeptical activism can still be effective. Remember how on Sunday Skepchick Elyse put out the call to Skepchic readers to complain to movie theaters that were reportedly going to be airing a public […]
If there’s one characteristic of denialists of all stripes, it’s that they have a strong tendency to personalize their dislike of their particular bete noir science. For instance, anti-vaccine activists tend to attack Paul Offit as though he were the Dark Lord of Vaccination. Creationists tend to attack Charles Darwin (who, being conveniently dead, can’t […]
This just in… One of my regular readers pointed me to a most excellent comment that appeared on everybody’s favorite anti-vaccine propaganda crank blog Age of Autism. After a post discussing a testimonial that allegedly demonstrates that the Gardasil vaccine is dangerous, A commenter named Sarah wrote: I just want to add another major event […]
They call it the Nobel disease. Linus Pauling is the prototypical example. A brilliant chemist who won two Nobel Prizes, one for chemistry and the Nobel Peace Prize, in his later years Pauling became convinced that high dose vitamin C was a highly effective treatment for cancer and the common cold and, expanding upon that, […]
It figures. I’m gone for a couple of days, paying little attention to the blogosphere or the Internet, and something big has to happen. Remember a couple of weeks ago, when in the context of asking how we should respond to the anti-vaccine movement I discussed a recent campaign by the anti-vaccine group SafeMinds to […]