Tag: Megan Heimer

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Antivaccine nonsense Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Religion Skepticism/critical thinking

Contamination requiring ritual purification: Superstitious concepts at the heart of antivaccine beliefs

One form of ritual purification practiced in Japan. Antivaccine beliefs are steeped in concepts of contamination and the need for ritual purification, which they project onto pro-science advocates.

Much of the belief system that undergirds antivaccine views is rooted in superstition. That’s why it’s not a coincidence that antivaxers frequently speak in terms of contamination due to vaccines as a cause of autism and all the other conditions for which antivaxers blame vaccines and ritual purification in the form of “detoxification” as the treatment. These beliefs very much resemble religious beliefs, and antivaxers project them onto pro-science advocates.

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine

Criticism of pseudoscience and quackery is not "hate speech"

I sense a new disturbance in the antivaccine force. I hadn’t planned on blogging about the antivaccine movement again, but I felt that I needed to do a follow up to yesterday’s (hopefully) amusing little takedown of the antivaccine stylings of new member of that group personification of the Dunning-Kruger effect and arrogance of ignorance, […]