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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Homeopathy for autism? That’s certainly not thinking!

I write about homeopathy fairly regularly on this blog because there is no quackery that is (1) so obviously quackery and (2) such a perfect topic to use to illustrate a lot of issues relevant to medical science, such as issues in clinical trials resulting in false positives and, of course, placebo effects. Basically, homeopathy […]

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

Zika virus and microcephaly: Antivaccine warriors say it’s vaccines that did it!

Last week, I wrote about how conspiracy theories have been flowing fast and furious about the Zika virus and microcephaly. Even if you didn’t see that post (perhaps instead having seen this one), you’ve probably seen the news reports describing how last fall the observation of a large number of cases of microcephaly, characterized by […]

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

The CDC whistleblower data dump redux: Even William Thompson appears not to believe the antivaccine spin

Yesterday was kind of busy and a long day in the operating room rather drained me. So I only had time for a quick followup to yesterday’s post on how Matt Carey obtained the entire document dump that the “CDC whistleblower” William W. Thompson gave to Rep. Bill Posey (R-FL), who then gave it to […]

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Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Dr. Lipson versus Dr. Brownstein: Science versus antivaccine misinformation and fear mongering in my own back yard

It always irritates me when I discover a new antivaccine crank in my state; so you can imagine how irritated I become when I discover one right in my very city (OK, metropolitan area). When that happens, it becomes a bit more personal than my usual mission to refute antivaccine misinformation. So I was most […]

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

Déjà vu all over again, part deux: Yet another Internet survey on vaccinations

One of the best things about blogging is that I don’t feel obligated to cover a topic completely in one post because I know I can always write another one or revisit the topic later. It also allows me to look at what I like to call “variations on a theme” of various kinds of […]