Autism and vaccines are not linked or associated according to real science. This has been published in real scientific journals written by real scientists and physicians. Even though the science is clear to almost everyone, the false claim about vaccines… Read More »Autism and vaccines – 164 science articles say no link (UPDATED)
Anti-vaccine activists always want a “debate” about vaccine safety and effectiveness, but it is already settled science based on evidence.
I used the ChatGPT artificial intelligence bot to find out if vaccines cause autism. The AI’s answer shows that it’s not anti-vaccine.
A recent paper has been published that shows that rates of autism have tripled over the past 20 years, but it is not related to vaccines.
There was a measles outbreak in Ohio. Of course, almost all of these children did not get their MMR vaccine to prevent it.
Jenny McCarthy was once the MTV drunk college dating game hostess and former “journalist” on The View. I remember when she joined The View – there was widespread condemnation of her hiring from scientists, journalists, and yours truly because of her annoying anti-vaccine rhetoric. Clearly, no one of any note supported her being hired on the View, except for websites like the Age of Pushing Nonsense To Harm Children.
Read More »Jenny McCarthy, with help from Oprah, misinforms about vaccines
I don’t usually do this, but I wanted to post the transcript from the outstanding Brandy Zadrozny podcast about how the anti-vaccine movement treated Tiffany Dover who fainted after receiving the COVID-19 vaccine 18 months ago. Dorit Rubinstein Reiss wrote an in-depth article about Dover soon after it happened, and we have updated it as we have gotten more information. Not to give away a spoiler, but she’s still alive.
I have posted the full transcript of episode 4 because it gives you a history of the anti-vaccine movement and the various “truthers” who pass fall information about it. I’m not going to edit the transcript, but I will add in my commentary here and there (it’ll be in bold type) and links for more information, something you can’t get from a podcast. This is very long, but it’s filled with great information. I have made minor edits to spelling and punctuation to make it more readable.
I’m someone who prefers reading content to listening to podcasts or watching YouTube because I like clicking on links or researching more. If you’re like me, then you’ll love this.
Read More »Examining the anti-vaccine movement — a podcast from Brandy Zadrozny
If you spend time listening to anti-vaxxers, you would hear that they would support vaccinations if there were better vaccine clinical trial design. The problem with the anti-vaxxer demand for a better vaccine clinical trial design is one of several moving targets for their denialism, relying on a form of the Argument from ignorance, claiming that if we can’t absolutely “prove” that vaccines are safe, then it must be absolutely unsafe. It’s trying.
For example, there are literally thousands of articles, (an example here and was discussed here), that provide overwhelming evidence of the safety and effectiveness of vaccines using real science, real statistics, and real hard work. The antithesis of the fake science, bogus statistics, and 2 hours of Google.
Read More »One vaccine clinical trial to rule them all — moving goalposts
I always joked that I could have a profitable business if I engaged in quackery. I’ve got all of this science floating in my brain which I could use to confuse the customer and have them buy my quackery. But I have morals, so I don’t.
I just read a blog post by Melanie Trecek-King in Thinking is Power, a wonderful website that pushes critical thinking skills, something that I find is totally lacking in the quackery world. Anyway, I thought I take her nine steps and give it the old feathered dinosaur take — you know, a little snark, a lot of science, and a little bit of teaching. But read her article too, since I’m “borrowing” her ideas.
Before I start, it has become clear to me that all of the people pushing their quackery are also grifters — they sell their quackery for profit. Joe Mercola and Andrew Wakefield double down on their pseudoscience, just to add money to their coffers.
Please, don’t use this list to start your own profitable pseudoscience business. Use it as a method to weed out the quacks, woomeisters, and pseudoscientists.
Read More »Quackery grifting — easy money for pushing pseudoscience
Retracted anti-vaccine papers are a staple of my articles published here. Usually, they try to create some fake link between vaccines and autism, but these papers try to say anything that casts vaccines in a bad light.
As we know, real science has established that there is no link between vaccines and autism. Anti-vaccine papers generally try to show this link without epidemiological or clinical studies – they just try to make some specious biologically implausible claims trying to link something about vaccines to autism.
Much of the anti-vaccine research is so bad, so poorly designed, that it’s relegated to low-quality, predatory journals which have laughably poor peer-review systems. Even in those locations, we can find the occasional retracted anti-vaccine papers, because they are often so bad that even these predatory publishers are embarrassed.
So, I present to you, the loyal reader, a list of retracted anti-vaccine papers (and I use that term very carefully). It’s not a comprehensive list, it’s just what I’ve seen over the past few years. If you know of a retracted paper that I missed, leave a citation in the comments.
Read More »A list of retracted anti-vaccine papers – bad science and bad research