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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine

A tale of two news stories: The HPV and flu vaccines and why it’s so easy to confuse correlation with causation

And so it begins. Well, it hasn’t really just begun. In fact, it’s been going on a long time. I’m talking about confusing correlation with causation when it comes to vaccines. For example, the “vaccines cause autism” variety of the anti-vaccine movement blatantly confuses the correlation with the beginning of the increase in autism diagnoses […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Medicine

Generation Rescue, Jenny McCarthy, and the anti-vaccine movement: Confusing correlation with causation

This two-part video trashes common antivaccine arguments better than any video I’ve seen in a long time: That’s right. Vaccines educate the immune system, and Generation Rescue is full of…well, you know what it’s full of. Now if only Bill Maher would watch these videos. Let’s make ’em go viral!

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Autism quackery in my second hometown

My first hometown, as many readers of this blog know, is Detroit, where I spent the first ten years or so of my life. My second hometown, as I pointed out a while back when a particularly loony city council candidate caught the eye of the skeptical blogosphere. Unfortunately, I just found out that there’s […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Entertainment/culture Medicine Pseudoscience Skepticism/critical thinking Television

Complain to CBS: CBS resident anti-vaccine propagandist Sharyl Attkisson sucks up to anti-vaccine pseudoscientist Andrew Wakefield

Watch CBS News Videos Online A number of you sent me this link. It’s to a video (above) of Sharyl Attkisson, CBS News’ resident anti-vaccine propagandist, putting on a nauseating display of sucking up to Andrew Wakefield over his recent monkey study, the one that I deconstructed yesterday to show it for the lousy science […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine

Now there’s a cage match I’d like to see when I get back from Chicago…

…Mark Crislip versus Doug Bremner. Dr. Crislip calmly explains the evidence regarding flu vaccination and why it’s safe and effective. Perhaps the most important point there is this: So it’s a suboptimal vaccine. And that’s a problem. One, because it will make it more difficult to prove efficacy in clinical studies and two, there is […]