VSD

Why does pseudoscience in medicine and vaccines seem so popular today?

by Michael Simpson
2022-01-11
Cancer, Del Bigtree, Homeopathy, Pseudoscience, Robert F Kennedy Jr, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Vaccines

These days, it appears that pseudoscience in medicine, everything from homeopathy to anti-vaccine beliefs to cancer treatments to chiropractic to naturopathy, has taken hold of many people’s choices. It’s become so frustrating to read stories about people forsaking science-based medicine to use some quack treatment to treat their cancer.

I think there’s a basic reason for it — science is hard. Whether it results from the lack of education in science to a misunderstanding of science is irrelevant, too many people think that science-based medicine doesn’t work. Except it does.

I’ve written about pseudoscience over a hundred times, but I never answered the question of why it grabs the attention of people. I’m going to try to answer that here.

Aluminum in vaccines does not cause type 1 diabetes

We know that there are no links between vaccines and type 1 diabetes mellitus, and now a new study shows that the aluminum in vaccines also isn’t linked to the disease. I’m sure that Christopher Aluminum Exley and James Lyons-Weiler are crying. Or they will just claim that all other scientists are wrong and they are right.

A lot of the vaccine deniers believe that vaccines cause Type 1 diabetes (or here), based on little evidence. As far as I can tell, this myth is based on the “research” from J. Barthelow Classen, M.D., who has pushed the idea that vaccines cause type 1 diabetes, through some magical process that has never been supported by other independent evidence.

In another example of the anti-vaccine zealot’s cherry-picking evidence to support their a priori conclusions, they ignore the utter lack of plausibility supporting any link between vaccines and Type 1 diabetes. But once again, real scientific research has found no link between vaccines and diabetes.

And new research has provided robust evidence that there is no link between the aluminum in vaccines and type 1 diabetes mellitus.

COVID-19 vaccine mortality risk is lower than in an unvaccinated group

by Michael Simpson
2021-10-22
COVID-19, JNJ, Moderna, Pfizer, Vaccines

The COVID-19 vaccine mortality risk has been a subject of a lot of myths and misinformation ever since the vaccines were released. Too much of the false information relies upon dumpster diving into the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) rather than good science that might show causality.

The CDC published a study in the peer-reviewed Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report on 22 October 2021 which examined the risk of non-COVID mortality in a COVID-19 vaccine group compared to an unvaccinated group. So that I don’t bury the lede, the risk of death from non-COVID causes was much higher in the unvaccinated group compared to the vaccinated one.

Let’s look at the details.