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Complementary and alternative medicine Entertainment/culture Medicine Popular culture Pseudoscience Quackery Science Skepticism/critical thinking

The decline of pseudoscience? More like the mainstreaming of pseudoscience

As hard as it is to believe, I’ve been spending a significant part of my time countering pseudoscience for close to 17 years, so long that it seems that I’ve always been doing it. Of course, that’s not true; I didn’t actually become involved in this seemingly never-ending Sisyphean task until I was in my […]

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Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Politics Popular culture Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

A highly misguided concern about California SB 277 and cracking down on nonmedical vaccine exemptions

It never ceases to amaze me how very smart people can miss some very obvious points. Now, as most of my readers know, I was at NECSS over the weekend. Because I was busy giving a talk, doing panels, and then enjoying other speakers’ talks, I wasn’t paying much attention to some of the issues […]

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Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Popular culture Pseudoscience Quackery Skepticism/critical thinking

Combatting antiscience denialism and quackery

I spent a nice long weekend in New York at NECSS, which has grown to quite the big skeptical conference since the last time I was there five years ago. The Friday Science-Based Medicine session went quite well and, as far as I could tell, appeared to be well-received; so hopefully we will be doing […]

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Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine

When a parent won’t abide by the understanding behind a non-medical exemption to school vaccine mandates

As I write this, I’m kind of beat. The reason for this is simple. Traveling sucks the energy out of me, and I just got back from almost four days in Houston for the Society of Surgical Oncology (SSO) meeting. Yes, I was a mere dozen (at most) miles from that Heart of Darkness known […]

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

The antivaccine movement wins in Oregon: Senate Bill 442 is dead

How quickly things change. If there’s one thing I always feel obligated to warn my fellow pro-science advocates about vaccines and the antivaccine movement, it’s that we can never rest on our laurels or assume that the tide is turning in our direction. The reason is simple: Antivaccinationism is a powerful belief system, every bit […]