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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Year end award lists you do and don’t want to be on

Christmas and New Years are almost here. As a result, as is always the case this time of year, we’re being flooded with “year end” lists. These lists are a fun distraction that I actually rather look forward to as an amusing (and sometimes annoying) year end tradition. In particular, I’m a sucker for “best […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Popular culture Pseudoscience Quackery

Did a gadolinium contrast agent used for MRIs “poison” Chuck Norris’ wife Gena?

Earlier this month, Chuck Norris and his wife Gena filed a lawsuit against manufacturers of MRI contrast agents, claiming that the gadolinium in them had “poisoned” Gena. But did it? The evidence linking gadolinium with the symptoms Gena Norris suffered is, even under the most generous interpretation, quite shaky, and there is no doubt that she has been victimized by quacks.

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Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

How antivaxers deceptively don the mantle of “vaccine safety activists”

Antivaxers like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. bend over backwards to represent themselves as “not antivaccine.” Don’t believe them. They are. It’s how they suck in the clueless, like Robert De Niro and Pratik Chougule.

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Robert De Niro issue a $100,000 vaccine “challenge.” It’s every bit as much as scam as Jock Doubleday’s “vaccine challenge” was a decade ago.

Longtime vaccine advocates will likely remember Jock Doubleday’s “vaccine challenge,” in which he offered up to $150,000 to anyone who would drink a body-weight calibrated dose of the vaccine additives in the childhood vaccine schedule. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Robert De Niro have teamed up to issue a challenge every bit as nonsensical from a scientific standpoint, with the added bonus of its being a scam as well.

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Science Skepticism/critical thinking

In which I am called an astroturfer and generously offered a chance at unconditional surrender by antivaccine cranks

Ever since the Disneyland measles outbreak hit high gear last month and permeated the national consciousness, the antivaccine movement has, justifiably, been on the defensive. We’ve been treated to the spectacle of a truly despicable cardiologist spewing antivaccine nonsense with an added dollop of contempt for parents of children with cancer who are worried about […]