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Liz Ditz

vaccine research

Vaccine research – it doesn’t mean what the anti-vaxxers think it means

How many times have you read a comment from an anti-vaccine zealot along the lines of “do your research, vaccines are bad.” That comment seems to imply two things – that the anti-vaxxer believes they have done real vaccine research, and those on the science/medicine side have not done real vaccine research.

Typical of nearly every claim made by the anti-vaccine religion, this is another one where they understate how hard vaccine research really is while overstating their actual skills and experience in comprehending real scientific research. I suppose this is a perfect example of the Dunning-Kruger effect – a cognitive bias wherein people without a strong scientific background fail to recognize their actual ineptitude in the field and mistakenly overrate their knowledge and abilities as greater than it is.

On the other hand, I’ve done real scientific research and worked hard at it. Time to explain.Read More »Vaccine research – it doesn’t mean what the anti-vaxxers think it means

vaccine injury

Vaccine injury payouts – another trope that abuses NVICP statistics

Another day, another anti-vaccine trope finds it way out of the grave to enter the zombie apocalypse of anti-vaccine misinformation and lies. Today’s zombie trope is the one that the NVICP (National Vaccine Injury Compensation Plan, see Note 1) payouts are so huge that they the “prove” that vaccines are dangerous and should be kept it away from children.

My friend Liz Ditz wrote about this trope and gave it a solid debunking a couple of years ago. She is much nicer than yours truly, the cranky feathery dinosaur. We’re going to give it the full Skeptical Raptor treatment which means a lot of science, some snark, and a dollop of mockery. More seriously, I wanted to update her numbers and make a few more, possibly sarcastic, points.Read More »Vaccine injury payouts – another trope that abuses NVICP statistics

Pseudoscience and the desperate anti-vaccine intrigue

Rooting out pseudoscience out in the world is a full time job for literally hundreds of people, but many of the writers out there tend to focus on a few things. This blog, for example, mostly focuses on creationism, the anti-vaccine lunacy, and rarely, global warming. Creationism, for example, has a long tradition of pseudoscience, so the arguments debunking creationism is well known, and the creationists more or less rely upon the age old fallacies, which convince the True Believers™ but make real scientists chuckle. It has really evolved (pun intended) to a static argument but there is no scientific controversy, it’s just evolution denialists on one side and real science on the other. If this were a real debate, it would be over and the creationists would be crawling back home in tears.Read More »Pseudoscience and the desperate anti-vaccine intrigue

Checking for pseudoscience in real science news (updated)

One of the larger problems of the internet (OK, there are a lot) is how science is discussed out in the world.  Google any science topic, and you’ll get thousand or millions of hits on any idea in science or medicine. The information is derived from other websites, news reports, rumors, or, to be cynical, from outright fabrication. In the fields of science and medicine, critical thinking is absolutely necessary to understanding it. Because it’s hard work, pseudoscience and anti-science have become quite prevalent lately.  Read More »Checking for pseudoscience in real science news (updated)