Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Autism Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Pseudoscience Skepticism/critical thinking

Ben Swann’s long-awaited report on the “CDC whistleblower” goes over like a lead balloon of antivaccine misinformation

Ben Swann, anchor of the evening news for the local Atlanta CBS affiliate and the face of his Truth In Media series of videos, thinks himself an investigative journalist and a truth teller, but much of what I see him reporting more closely resembles reporting as though done by a cross between Ted Baxter, Ron […]

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

Antivaccinationists denying the cult of Andrew Wakefield and Jenny McCarthy

Two of the great “icons”—if you can call them “great” given that they’re icons but hardly “great”—of the antivaccine movement are Andrew Wakefield and Jenny McCarthy. Over the last decade, they have arguably been the most influential people in the antivaccine movement. The reasons are simple. Let’s look at Jenny McCarthy first. In 2007, when […]

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Autism Politics

Kevin Barry, you magnificent bastard, I read your antivaccine book!

Kevin Barry wrote a book featuring the transcripts of the “CDC Whistleblower’s” conversations with Brian Hooker as evidence that there’s a conspiracy at the CDC to hide scientific evidence that vaccines cause autism. Well, I read Barry’s book, and it is incredibly thin gruel indeed.

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Entertainment/culture History Homeopathy Humor Medicine Naturopathy Paranormal Popular culture Pseudoscience Quackery Religion Science Skepticism/critical thinking

The Woo Boat

File this one under the category: You can’t make stuff like this up. (At least, I can’t.) Let’s say you’re a die hard all-conspiracy conspiracy theorist and alternative medicine believer (a not uncommon combination). You love Alex Jones and Mike Adams and agree with their rants that there is a New World Order trying to […]

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Quackery

The return of the revenge of the “CDC whistleblower”

A couple of weeks ago, I first took note of a new conspiracy theory that’s been brewing in the antivaccine crankosphere, namely the claim that big pharma has been systematically murdering alternative medical doctors, starting with autism quack Jeff Bradstreet, who committed suicide the day after the FDA raided his office. Of course, it didn’t […]