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Cancer Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Antiperspirants: Not a cause of breast cancer

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post in which I explained why wearing a bra does not cause breast cancer. After I had finished the post, it occurred to me that I should have saved that post for now, given that October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. The reason is that, like clockwork, pretty […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Computers and social media Medicine Popular culture Quackery

Two and a half months later, quacks are still upset about Wikipedia

Quacks really hate Wikipedia. It’s understandable, really. Wikipedia has some fairly tight standards regulating its form and content. Quacks, thinking that because anybody can edit Wikipedia articles it must mean that they can edit the entries on their favorite bit of woo to their hearts’ content in order to make it look more scientifically supported […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Quackery

Andrew Wakefield is still at it blaming vaccines for autism

Ever since I first became aware of the antivaccine movement more than ten years ago, I’ve had little choice but to periodically pay attention to one of the godfathers of the antivaccine movement, Andrew Wakefield. Wakefield is the quack whose dubious case series that The Lancet foolishly published in 1998 launched a million antivaccine quacks. […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

A conservative “failure” of skepticism over vaccines?

Lawrence Solomon appears to be a rising star in the antivaccine movement. I started taking notice of him a couple of months ago, spewing classic long-refuted antivaccine talking points with the enthusiasm of a newbie who thinks he’s the first one to have thought of them and the arrogance of ignorance of a convert who […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.: Still an antivaccine crank after all these years

Only really long time readers will remember this, but back in the day (June 2005, to be exact), I discovered Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and his antivaccine nuttery when he published his epically bad piece of antivaccine conspiracy mongering, Deadly Immunity, both in Salon.com and Rolling Stone (the latter of which doubled down on it […]