Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Quackery

Mothering: A bastion of woo targeted at young mothers

Over the last three weeks, the British Medical Journal (BMJ) has been publishing a multipart expose by investigative journalist Brian Deer that enumerated in detail the specifics of how a British gastroenterologist turned hero of the anti-vaccine movement had committed scientific fraud by falsifying key aspects of case reports that he used as the basis […]

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Autism Medicine Politics Quackery Science Skepticism/critical thinking

Misdirected criticism by someone from whom I would never have expected it

It is with some trepidation and more than a little regret that I begin writing this piece. The reason for my hesitation is that, by doing so, no matter what I say I’ll be inserting myself into what appears to be a disagreement among people all of whom I admire very much. I don’t really […]

Categories
Homeopathy Medicine Quackery

Homeopathy in Cuba?

Homeopathy is among the most ridiculous of so-called “complementary and alternative medicine therapies.” I realize that I’ve made this point over and over and over again, but it bears repeating because, no matter how often homeopathy is shown to be utter and complete woo, homeopaths always seem to bounce right back, Gish galloping between the […]

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Autism Complementary and alternative medicine Medicine Pseudoscience

Battling misinformed consent: How should we respond to the anti-vaccine movement?

Antivaxers frequently claim that they are champions of “informed consent.” In reality, their version of informed consent is a parody of consent that I like to refer to as “misinformed consent.”

Categories
Antivaccine nonsense Autism Medicine

What does it mean to be “anti-vaccine”?

What does “anti-vaccine” really mean? Orac attempts to explain.