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

Quoth an antivaxer: Vaccines are making dogs autistic!

To antivaxers, it’s always the vaccines. Now they’re claiming vaccines cause autism in dogs. The problem, of course, is that vaccines don’t cause autism in humans, and labeling dog behavior as “autistic” is problematic in the extreme.

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Popular culture Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

It’s a strange world, after all: Orac vs. The Shat and fake news over…Autism Speaks?

Orac is attacked by Capt. Kirk using fake news over the course of several days. Truly, it is a strange world.

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

More atrocious antivaccine science promoted by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr

The latest study being promoted as evidence that vaccines cause autism is truly atrocious. Basically, like many epidemiological studies examining putative links between vaccines and adverse health outcomes, it’s mistaking statistical noise for signal. What’s odd about this study is that not a single statistician or epidemiologist appears to have been involved with its design or execution, although a lawyer, a health economist, and an investment banker were.

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Another reminder that there is no autism epidemic

One of the core beliefs of the antivaccine movement is that there is an “autism epidemic.” The observation that autism prevalence has been climbing for the last two to three decades led some parents with autistic children to look for a cause, specifically an environmental cause, for autism. Because several vaccines are given in the […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Popular culture Quackery

A case study in fake news: Did the FBI raid the CDC based on the CDC whistleblower’s allegations?

Fake news has become an enormous problem. Here, Orac takes a look at a rather fascinating tidbit of fake news aimed at the antivaccine movement. Did the FBI really raid the CDC with the “CDC whistleblower” showing them what to find? Of course not. But a story like this is nearly irresistible to true believers that vaccines cause autism.