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Medicine Popular culture Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking Television

the goop lab on Netflix: Selling quackery under the guise of female “empowerment”

“the goop lab” will premiere on Netflix on January 24. It’s just the latest goop vehicle to sell quackery to women under the guise of “empowerment.”

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Medicine Pseudoscience Skepticism/critical thinking

Jami Hepworth (a.k.a. Skeptical Doctor’s Wife): The latest antivaccine activist on the block

Jami Hepworth is a doctor’s wife. Having dubbed herself the “Skeptical Doctor’s Wife,” she has become an antivaccine activist. Unfortunately, doctor’s wife or not, medicine and science are clearly not her forte. She also doesn’t like laughing emojis directed at her.

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Antivaccine nonsense Bad science Medicine Popular culture Pseudoscience Quackery

An attempt to “Null”-ify Wikipedia on science

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.

Categories
Biology Clinical trials Complementary and alternative medicine Integrative medicine Pseudoscience Quackery

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”?

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Medicine Quackery

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?