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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

A survey administered by a German anti-vaccine homeopath backfires spectacularly

Sometimes I feel a little bit guilty when I’m writing a post deconstructing anti-vaccine nonsense, “alternative medicine” quackery, or some other form of pseudoscience. This guilt usually derives when I end up picking a target that’s just too easy, a study that’s just so mind-numbingly, brain-meltingly awful that it’s not much of a challenge, even […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Medicine

Yet another bad day for the anti-vaccine movement 2011

Here we go again. Having been in the blogging biz for nearly seven years and developed a special interest in the anti-vaccine movement, I think I’ve been at this long enough to make some observations with at least a little authority. One thing that I’ve noticed is a very consistent pattern in which, every time […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Clinical trials Medicine

Better late than never: The Dunning-Kruger effect meets an incompetent anti-vaccine “analysis”

It never ceases to amaze me just how ignorant of very basic principles of science anti-vaccine activists often are. I mean, seriously. Every time they try to post something, whether they know it or not, they end up making themselves look so very, very stupid–or at least ignorant. The Dunning-Kruger effect takes over, and people […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

“Tell both sides” strikes again in vaccine reporting

Over the years that I’ve been following the anti-vaccine movement, I’ve become familiar with typical narratives that reporters use when reporting on the vaccine fears stirred up by anti-vaccine activists. One narrative is the “brave maverick doctor” narrative, in which an iconoclastic quack (such as Mark Geier or Andrew Wakefield, for example) is portrayed fighting […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Medicine Quackery

Would you like some whine with that cheese, Ms. Fisher?

I must admit, I’m surprised that it took so long for this to happen. Remember back in April? Three months ago, uber-quack (in my opinion) Joe Mercola teamed up with the grand dame of the anti-vaccine movement Barbara Loe Fisher of the misnamed National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) to run a “public service announcement” on […]