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Biology Complementary and alternative medicine Evolution Intelligent design/creationism Medicine Quackery Science Skepticism/critical thinking

A misstep in castigating HuffPo’s journey into creationism

I’ve been a critic of Arianna Huffington’s massive group blog, The Huffington Post, since three weeks after it first blighted the blogosphere. That’s when I first noticed that the “health” section (such as it is) of HuffPo had already become a wretched hive of scum and anti-vaccine quackery, something I began documenting again and again […]

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Autism Medicine Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Motivated reasoning and the anti-vaccine movement

One theme that I keep revisiting again and again is not so much a question of the science behind medical therapies (although certainly I do discuss that issue arguably more than any other) but rather a question of why. Why is it that so many people cling so tenaciously to pseudoscience, quackery, and, frequently, conspiracy […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

The anti-vaccine war on science: An epidemic of fear

Many have been the times over the last five years that I’ve called out bad journalism about medicine in general and vaccines in particular, especially the coverage of the discredited notion that vaccines or mercury in vaccines somehow was responsible for the “autism epidemic.” That’s why I feel a special responsibility to highlight good reporting […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

The anti-vaccine movement strikes back against Amy Wallace using misogyny

The little matter of finding out that the actor who played Data on Star Trek: The Next Generation appears to have anti-vaccine proclivities sidetracked me from something that I had actually wanted to blog about yesterday. Specifically, it’s something that my blog bud Abel Pharmboy has been hitting hard over the last couple of days. […]

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

The worst pseudoscience of the decade?

It’s the end, the end of the ’70s It’s the end, the end of the century. Joey Ramone, 1979 As amazing as it is to me, the first decade of the 21st century is fast approaching its end. It seems like only yesterday that my wife and I were waiting for the dawn of the […]