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Recent Insolence
Chiropractic quackery, power metal edition: The Hootsman laid low January 19, 2020
Andy Serwer: Giving RFK, Jr. an unopposed platform to spread antivaccine propaganda on Yahoo! Finance January 17, 2020
No, WHO scientists did not "question the safety of vaccines" at the Global Vaccine Safety Summit January 15, 2020
Acupuncture does not work for chronic pain January 13, 2020
UCHealth: Making pseudoscientific claims about acupuncture January 10, 2020
Contrary to advice from an antivaxxer, claiming a history of anaphylaxis after vaccination will not guarantee a medical exemption January 8, 2020
Orac on No, WHO scientists did not "question the safety of vaccines" at the Global Vaccine Safety Summit
Ev on No, WHO scientists did not "question the safety of vaccines" at the Global Vaccine Safety Summit
christine kincaid on Andy Serwer: Giving RFK, Jr. an unopposed platform to spread antivaccine propaganda on Yahoo! Finance
E.V. on No, WHO scientists did not "question the safety of vaccines" at the Global Vaccine Safety Summit
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Quackery
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"A statement of fact cannot be insolent." The miscellaneous ramblings of a surgeon/scientist on medicine, quackery, science, and pseudoscience (and anything else that interests him).
Tag: mercury
Dr. Ken Walker (a.k.a. Dr. W. Gifford-Jones) plays the martyr over his antivaccine op-ed
Orac December 21, 2018
Dr. Ken Walker (more famously known as Canadian syndicated columnist Dr. W. Gifford-Jones) wrote an antivaccine op-ed for The Toronto Sun so full of antivaccine misinformation that was retracted after a flurry of complaints and bad publicity. Now, he plays the martyr. Unfortunately for him, he does it while spewing the same sort of antivaccine misinformation for which his previous op-ed had been retracted.
No, antivaccine quack Mark Geier has not been exonerated, but the Maryland Board of Physicians appears to have screwed up
Orac February 6, 2018
Autism quack Dr. Mark Geier recently won a $2.5 million judgment against the Maryland Board of Physicians for having violated his medical privacy by including the name of a drug he was taking in a public cease-and-decist order. Antivaxers are trying to spin this as some sort of vindication of his antivaccine quackery. Make no mistake, the board appears to have screwed up, but that has nothing to do with whether its revocation of Geier's medical license was justified.
Bogus "challenges" to prove the scientific consensus: The M.O. of a crank
Orac February 27, 2017
Cranks love 'em: Cash "challenges" demanding that skeptics and scientists "prove" the scientific consensus. Of course, these challenges are always rigged.
Mike Adams explains how to "naturally detox" from mandatory vaccines. It backfires.
Orac March 14, 2016
One of the most pernicious lies promoted by the antivaccine movement is a trope that I've labeled the "toxins gambit." Basically, it's the lie, oft repeated in hysterical terms, that there are all sorts of horrible toxic chemicals in vaccines, and it is those toxic substances that are responsible for the claimed adverse effects of vaccines. Now, it is true that there are substances in vaccines that can be toxic, but the toxins gambit completely ignores a little thing known as the dose-response curve or, if you want to go hundreds of years back in time, the admonition attributed to …
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. parties like it's 1999 over thimerosal and autism
Orac June 17, 2014
It was just over a year ago that I had my last bit to say about a man who can arguably called the antivaccine activist who gave Orac his start. I'm referring, of course, to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Indeed, my first deconstruction of the nonsense about vaccines that Kennedy laid down in 2005 in an article foolishly and irresponsibly published in both Salon.com and Rolling Stone was what got Orac noticed, a mere six months or so after this blog had begun—exactly nine years ago, today, amazingly enough. (Holy crap, this blog is old…) Every so often, Kennedy has …
Mike Adams turns his mad science skillz to analyzing a flu vaccine. Hilarity ensues.
Orac June 3, 2014
It's always jarring when I go to a scientific meeting, in this case the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting, imbibe the latest clinical science on cancer, and then check back to see what the quacks are doing. On the other hand, there was a session at this year's ASCO on "integrative oncology" (stay tuned for an…Insolent…discussion of it sometime in the next few days after I get a chance to watch the videos again and look up the papers cited in support of woo), so maybe it isn't as jarring as it once was to come back into …
Mike Adams issues a challenge over vaccines to Neil deGrasse Tyson, and hilarity ensues
I'm sure that a lot of you, like me, are watching the rebooted version of Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, with Neil deGrasse Tyson taking over the hosting duties originally handled so ably over 30 years ago by Carl Sagan. I definitely enjoyed the first episode and am looking forward to additional episodes. The only thing that annoys me is that Cosmos is on at the same time as The Walking Dead, but that's what DVRs were made for. The first episode, which is all I've seen thus far at this writing, was quite impressive, and the segment at the end …
Naturopaths and vaccines
Orac October 9, 2013
It's rare to find a naturopath who isn't antivaccine. Sadly, even naturopaths who proclaim their fealty to vaccines as safe and effective disease prevention often betray antivaccine beliefs.
Choosing Wisely about homeopathy, supplements, and "detoxification" quackery
Orac September 27, 2013
One of the major differences between science-based medicine (SBM) and alternative medicine—or, as they call it these days, "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) or "integrative medicine"—is that SBM is always questioning itself, always reevaluating its practices. Related to this difference is that SBM does change its practice, discarding treatments that don't work and incorporating those that do work (or at least work better than older practices). As I've said many times before, the process by which this happens is messy and slower than we might like, and that provides ammunition to CAM practitioners to cast doubt on the scientific basis …
The "toxin gambit," resurrected
Orac October 26, 2012
Well, I'm here. That's right. As I mentioned yesterday, I'm at CSICon. As is the case when I'm at conferences, be they skeptical conferences or professional conferences, it's hard to predict the blogging time available. It could be a lot; it could be a little. Or it could be none. (Well, obviously it's not none, or you wouldn't be reading this.) In any case, there was lots of stuff going on, plus there was the second game of the World Series, which made me miss the live recording of The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe. Oh, well. Steve understood. So …
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