Denialism

Category: Anti-Vax Denialism

  • Are we giving Jon Stewart a pass for his contribution to the measles outbreak?

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    MarkH
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    I’m glad to see clips like this from the daily show appropriately mocking the deluded, and supposedly “educated” types that don’t vaccinate. But have we forgotten this episode from 2005 when he allowed RFK Jr to basically spout his nonsense about vaccines without challenge? It’s good and fine for Stewart to mock these people now.…

  • Vaccines and the Boanthropy Risk

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    MarkH
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    I’m reading Jeffrey Kacirk’s delightful Forgotten English, which includes this anecdote concerning boanthropy, a condition where a person believes himself to be a cow or ox: In 1792, Edward Jenner successfully developed a vaccine for smallpox by injecting a boy with closely related cowpox germs. He did this despite his medical critics’ attempts to scuttle…

  • Is Huffington Post no longer a denialist site?

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    MarkH
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    Seth Mnookin has reasons to hope. It has been clear though for years that Huffpo was a clearinghouse for what I would describe as liberal crankery, which includes things like Jenny McCarthy’s anti-vaccine crankery, or Bill Maher’s anti-pharma paranoia. But now they have a new site, Huffpo Science, and after my head stopped ringing from…

  • Oprah is a crank

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    MarkH
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    PZ brings to my attention this article in Newsweek which sums up Oprah’s views on health, and one sadly must come to the conclusion that Oprah is a crank. Based on our definition of crankery, one of the critical aspects is the incompetence of an individual in judging sources of information. How else can you…

  • Have you written your letter to Oprah yet?

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    MarkH
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    If you have been keeping up with Pal or Orac in my absence, you already know the bad news. Oprah has decided to up her woo quotient from promotion of the Secret and relatively harmless nonsense to actively promoting anti-vaccine conspiracy theories in the form of a Jenny McCarthy TV show. Gawker suggests a good…

  • The Autism/Vaccines Fraud

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    MarkH
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    I have to admit I’m somewhat surprised (even if Orac isn’t). We all knew that Andrew Wakefield’s research was bogus and the link between vaccines and autism was engineered by ideologues who fear vaccines irrationally. But fabrication of data? Sloppy research is one thing, but the need for cranks to be correct, no matter what…

  • Stop the RFK Jr. appointment NOW

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    MarkH
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    I would beg everyone who reads the scienceblogs and cares about science to contact the transition team in the Obama administration as Orac has requested. It should be clear by now to readers of this blog that pseudoscience is not a problem of just the right. The left wing areas of pseudoscience are just as…

  • “Kennedy” is a name, not a qualification

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    MarkH
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    I can’t cover this topic better than Orac; he’s the expert. I would like to suggest that you go read his post. This is important. I voted for Obama. I believe that he is one of the brightest people we’ve every had the chance to vote for, and I think that after 8 years of…

  • My irony meter just exploded

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    MarkH
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    How stupid do you have to be for Jenny McCarthy to legitimately toss the epithet back at you? This question may seem unanswerable, but in this case, McCarthy may have gotten it half right regarding Dennis Leary. The headline at MSNBC delcares: McCarthy calls Leary ‘obviously stupid’ I don’t know much about Leary, but like…

  • Another Open Letter to Jenny McCarthy

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    MarkH
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    Dear Jenny, Thank you! Thankyouthankyou thank YOU! You see, my medical education had a few gaps. I was unfortunate enough to do my training during the last couple of decades, which means I never saw measles, pertussis, polio, and many other vaccine-preventable diseases. Well, last year, I saw three cases of pertussis! Sweet! And it…