Winning antivaccine hearts and minds
I’ve been writing about the antivaccine movement for a long time. The reasons are many, but they boil down to a handful. First of all, it interests me. It interests me as an example of pseudoscience...
View ArticleIs Eric Merola issuing bogus DMCA takedown notices against critics of...
If there is one aspect of cranks that is almost universal (besides the aforementioned tendency to want to prove themselves through things like “live televised debates“), it’s a tendency to want to shut...
View ArticleAutismOne 2013: A quackfest just as quacky as ever
Well, April is over, which means that Autism Awareness Month is almost over. While antivaccinationists are saying goodbye to April and whining about the very concept of “autism awareness,” I can’t help...
View ArticleA young antivaccine propagandist plans to teach his mad skillz to other...
As hard as it might be to believe, one time over 20 years ago I actually took the Dale Carnegie course and, as part of that course, read his famous book How To Win Friends and Influence People. I know,...
View ArticleCongratulations are in order for Jake Crosby!
I’ve been trying to lay off the blogging on the weekend for a long time now, and, for the most part, I’ve been successful, as I’m sure regular readers will have noticed. However, sometimes I just can’t...
View Article“I don’t make assumptions” about vaccines and people’s motives
Every so often, I like to try to get into the mind of an antivaccine crank, a quack, or crank of another variety, because understanding what makes cranks tick (at least, as much as I can given that I’m...
View ArticleGet out the popcorn! This internecine war among antivaccinationists is...
There’s a general rule that whenever you see two enemies fighting with each other that you should generally just let them. Of course, some might argue, as Gandalf did about Saruman and Sauron, that the...
View ArticleGet out the popcorn! This internecine war among antivaccinationists is...
I don’t know why I’m interested in this, to the point where I’m on my sixth post about it since February. I sometimes even ask myself that very question, because taking an admittedly somewhat perverse...
View ArticleI love the smell of the pharma shill gambit in the morning. It smells...
I promised myself that I was done writing about Jenny McCarthy this week. Two posts, a lengthy one and a brief one, lamenting her being hired for a national daytime talk show was, in my view, enough....
View ArticleAntivaccine legislators are at it again
Here we go again. The “Holy Grail” (well, a “holy grail”) of the antivaccine movement is to have a “vaccinated versus unvaccinated” study performed, or, as it’s frequently abbreviated a “vaxed verus...
View ArticleYet another antivaccine meme rises from the grave again: No, Diane Harper...
Yet another zombie antivaccine meme rises from the grave to join its fellows Oh, no, not again! It was just two days ago that I decided to take on a zombie antivaccine meme that just keeps rising from...
View ArticleAn anonymous critic complains to Orac’s employers over his post on the murder...
Antivaccinationists, quacks, and apologists for antivaccinationists and quacks (but I repeat myself) seem to have an illusion that I’m just swimming in pharma lucre, that I sit in my underwear grinding...
View ArticleIn which antivaccinationist Ginger Taylor is taught a lesson, and not by Orac
It’s rare that my readers send me something that makes me laugh out loud, but this post did. I’ll give you a bit of background first, though. Lacking the science to back up their dangerous...
View ArticleThe antivaccine movement and its quest for legitimacy thwarted
If there’s one thing that the antivaccine fringe wants above all else, it’s legitimacy. They crave it almost above all else. They want to be taken seriously from a scientific standpoint. Unfortunately,...
View ArticleSometimes good things happen: The antivaccine fringe suffers a setback in...
Well, it’s done. The server migration should be finished. I was out and about last night giving a talk; so I’ll only have time for a relatively brief post (for me, at least). Once again, things happen...
View ArticleA rebuke to the antivaccine movement: A hundred million cases of disease...
As hard as it is to believe, I’ve been blogging nearly nine years. Indeed, my nine-year anniversary is coming up in just over a week. It’s been almost a decade! Early on during near-decade that I’ve...
View ArticleBleach Enema Karaoke
Long day in the OR yesterday. By the time I got home, believe it or not, I was too beat to deliver one of my characteristic rants full of Insolence and science that my readers all know and love (well,...
View ArticleMore arrogance of ignorance in the antivaccine movement
After a digression yesterday, it’s time to get back to business. Don’t get me wrong. Yesterday’s post was business. It was definitely something important (to me) that needed to be said, in my...
View ArticleAcid flashbacks to antivaccine conspiracy theories from nine years ago
I’m home. Oh, wait. No. Well, I’m back. Yes, the grant has been submitted, and I’m ready to get back to my hobby of science, skepticism, and, when necessary, laying down some Insolence, both Respectful...
View ArticleI do not think that study shows what you think it shows
Of all the cranks, quacks, antivaccinationists, and pseudoscientists that I’ve encountered (and applied a bit of not-so-Respectful Insolence to) over the years, there are a few who belong in the top...
View ArticleAd hominem and harassment: How antivaccine activists work
For some reason, I was really beat last night, and, given that this weekend is a holiday for a large proportion of the country (if, perhaps, not for a large proportion of my readership), I don’t feel...
View ArticleHow “they” view “us” (2014 edition)
A week ago or so, I was perusing my Google Alerts, along with various blogs and news websites, looking for something to blog about, when I noticed a disturbance in the pseudoscience Force. It’s a...
View ArticleAntivaccine activists bully high school filmmakers over a student documentary...
There’s a certain category of posts that I like to call (to myself, anyway) “taking care of business” posts. Usually, it’s a post about something that I missed the first time around but has, for some...
View ArticleEarn CME credits for attending an autism quackfest!
Well, it snuck up on me again, the way it has a tendency to do every year. Maybe it’s because Memorial Day is so early this year. Maybe it’s because there’s just so much work to do this week given the...
View ArticleA few holiday medical links while Orac (sort of) relaxes
Regular readers might be wondering why my output was—shall we say?—less extensive last week than it usually is. I even skipped a weekday and then followed it up with a recycled post from my...
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