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Bad science Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Quacks misuse Koch’s postulates to deny that SARS-CoV-2 causes COVID-19

Science denialists and quacks love abusing Koch’s postulates to deny that various microorganisms are the true cause of disease; so it was inevitable that they’d do it for COVID-19.

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Computers and social media Medicine Popular culture

Sayer Ji: Outraged that Google views “vaccine safety questions” to be akin to Pizzagate

Sayer Ji is outraged by a “Google Document Dump” that allegedly shows that Google views antivaccine views as being similar to conspiracy theories like Pizzagate, QAnon, Holocaust denial, and the like. I’m surprised that, if these documents are real, Google actually “gets” what antivaccine views are.

Categories
Biology Cancer Medicine Science Skepticism/critical thinking

No, the PSA test probably didn’t save Ben Stiller’s life

A frequent topic of discussion on this blog is the concept of overdiagnosis. It’s a topic I’ve been writing about regularly since around 2007 or so and is defined as the detection in an asymptomatic person of disease that, if left alone, would never progress to endanger that person’s life or well-being within his or […]

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Medicine

How overdiagnosis produced a nonexistent “epidemic” of thyroid cancer in Fukushima

One of my favorite topics to blog about over the last six or seven years has been the topic of overdiagnosis and overtreatment. These are two interrelated phenomena that most people are blissfully unaware of. Unfortunately, I’d also say that the majority of physicians are only marginally more aware than the public about these confounders […]

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery

Even in a deadly pandemic, germ theory denial persists

As hard as it is to believe, in the middle of a global pandemic that’s claimed so many lives and so thoroughly disrupted society, there are people who still deny germ theory. How can this be?