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Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Politics Pseudoscience Religion

The latest attempt by the antivaccine movement to use religion to oppose school vaccine mandates

Antivaxxers frequently claim that their objection to vaccines is based on their religion. Another attempt to frame opposition to school vaccine mandates as religious freedoms is making the rounds.

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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.

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Bad science Medicine Politics Popular culture Pseudoscience

Antivaxers in the wake of SB 276 and SB 714

After the passage of SB 276 and SB 714, antivaxers are very unhappy. They show this by likening vaccine mandates to 9/11 and claiming they know the “real reason” for them, big pharma and government “punishing” them and taking away their rights.

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Biology Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Integrative medicine Pseudoscience Quackery

Fabrizio Benedetti asks: “Does placebo research boost pseudoscience?”

Professor Fabrizio Benedetti is the most famous and almost certainly also the most influential researcher investigating the physiology of placebo effects. In a recent commentary, he asks whether placebo research is fueling quackery, as quacks co-opt its results. The answer to that question is certainly yes. A better question is: How do supporters of science counter the placebo narrative promoted by quacks, in which placebos represent the “power of the mind to heal the body”?

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Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Medicine Science

Corvelva and “Vaccinegate”: Italian antivaxers produce a dubious “scientific report” on fetal DNA in vaccines

The Italian antivaccine group Corvelva published a really bad “scientific report” claiming fetal DNA in vaccines is dangerous based on a dubious next generation sequencing analysis whose methods are not described. It’s not. To believe its claims, you have to believe that DNA can do anything.