Love it or hate it, Wikipedia is a main go-to rough and ready source of information for millions of people. Although I’ve had my problems with Wikipedia and used to ask whether it could provide reliable information on medicine and, in particular, alternative medicine and vaccines, given that anyone can edit it, I now conclude that Wikipedia must be doing OK, at least in these areas. After all, some of the highest profile promoters of alternative and “integrative” medicine hate Wikipedia, to the point of attacking it and concocting conspiracy theories about it.
Tag: pseudoscience
Fabrizio Benedetti asks: “Does placebo research boost pseudoscience?”
Professor Fabrizio Benedetti is the most famous and almost certainly also the most influential researcher investigating the physiology of placebo effects. In a recent commentary, he asks whether placebo research is fueling quackery, as quacks co-opt its results. The answer to that question is certainly yes. A better question is: How do supporters of science counter the placebo narrative promoted by quacks, in which placebos represent the “power of the mind to heal the body”?
Why did the Israeli Academy of Sciences and Humanities elect antivaccine quack Yehuda Shoenfeld to its ranks?
Last month, the Israeli Academy of Science and Humanities elected antivax quack Yehuda Shoenfeld to its ranks? Why and how could this have happened?
RFK Jr.: So antivaccine that even his family calls him out on it
RFK Jr. has been a frequent topic of this blog since 2005 because of his extreme antivaccine views. Now the Kennedy siblings have called him out for his antivax views, and it's true. Junior dishonors Robert F. Kennedy's legacy through his promotion of child-endangering antivaccine pseudoscience.
A horrifyingly unethical study of chiropractic treatment of infants with torticollis
Orac encounters a study of chiropractice manipulation under anesthesia for infant torticollis. Iit takes a lot to horrify Orac any more, but subjecting infants to unnecessary anesthesia and radiation to crack their necks did it.
Amazon, Facebook, and other streaming and social media platforms are finally cracking down on antivaccine misinformation
Over the last two weeks, Amazon, YouTube, Facebook, and other social media platforms started to crackdown on the spread of antivaccine misinformation on their services. Will it be enough?
Dr. Edward Fogarty’s antivaccine rant: Where’s my paper bag again?
Dr. Edward Fogarty is a radiologist who thinks he knows about vaccines. He recently published a deranged antivaccine rant in the form of an open letter to the Washington State legislature, thus bringing shame on his fellow physicians. Where's my paper bag again?
Antivaxers inundate the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) meeting
Yesterday, antivaxers inundated the public comment session of the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. There were only two pro-science advocates versus a host of antivaccine activists spouting pseudoscience
Ranjana Srivastava: When cancer patients want quackery
Regular readers will have noticed that I haven’t been blogging nearly as much as usual. All I can say is that a combination of personal and professional issues and obligations have gotten in the way. Also, I have been a bit under the weather, as hard as it is to believe that a Tarial cell-driven ultimate computer can be. Fortunately, however, things seem to be looking up, and I think that I’ll be able to get back into the swing of things next week. In the meantime, I saw a great article by oncologist Ranjana Srivastava, who notes that My …
Brian Hooker’s antivaccine pseudoscience has risen from the dead to threaten children again
Remember Brian Hooker's pseudoscience-laden "study" linking the MMR vaccine with autism in African-American boys? It's back from the dead! Even more hilariously, it' was published in that rag of a "journal" for all things right wing conspiracy pseudoscience, the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons.