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

Anger is an energy? Maybe, but it doesn’t help you evaluate vaccine science

Anger is an energy, as a certain old punk sang back in the 1980s. It can even be a great motivator, such as when anger overtakes us for injustice or over crimes. Anger, however, is not a particularly good intellectual tool, nor does it help in analyzing science. Which reminds me: J.B. Handley is back. […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Medicine Naturopathy

Is there a role for homeopathy in cancer care? I think you know the answer to that question…

Homeopathy is The One Quackery To Rule Them All. There, I’ve started off this post the way I start off most posts about homeopathy, with a statement of just how enormous a pile of pseudoscientific (or rather prescientific) quackery that it is. You’d think that in 2015 no one would believe that diluting a substance […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Acupuncture tropes on parade

I sometimes catch flak for repeating this, but there was a time when I thought there might be something to acupuncture. I don’t care, because, as a blogger, when I write a post I assume that a significant fraction of people reading it have never seen this blog before and therefore aren’t even the least […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery Science

Humpty Dumpty and cranks, quacks, and antivaccinationists

One of my favorite quotes from classic literature comes from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, when Alice encounters a rather strange character named Humpty Dumpty. Humpty Dumpty, as you will likely recall, was a giant egg with whom Alice got into an argument about the meaning of words: And only ONE for birthday presents, […]

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Complementary and alternative medicine Homeopathy Medicine Pseudoscience Quackery Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Another favorite pseudoscience trope: “I’m just providing information”

After having written yesterday’s piece about the fallacy known as the appeal to nature, a favorite fallacy of the alternative medicine crowd. The idea that if something is somehow “natural” it must be superior to anything viewed as “unnatural” or “man-made” is deeply ingrained in pseudoscientific medicine. Heck, there’s even a brand of quackery known […]