Results for: sharyl attkisson
Sharyl Attkisson and CBS News: An epic fail in reporting on the murder of autistic teen Alex Spourdalakis
An antivaccine reporter strikes again The damaged done by the antivaccine movement is primarily in how it frightens parents out of vaccinating using classic denialist tactics of spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD). Indeed, as has been pointed out many times before, antivaccinationists are often proud of their success in discouraging parents from vaccinating, with one leader of the antivaccine movement even...
Anti-vaccine propaganda from Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News
I’m not infrequently asked why the myth that vaccines cause autism and other anti-vaccine myths are so stubbornly resistant to the science that time and time again fails to support them. Certainly useful celebrity idiots like Jenny McCarthy are one reason. So, too, are anti-vaccine propaganda websites and blogs such as Age of Autism and anti-vaccine organizations like Generation Rescue, the National...
Antivaxxers easily see through the misdirection of RFK Jr.’s MAHA
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has been antivax for two decades. His fellow travelers are not happy about his leaving out vaccines in his "Make America Healthy Again." To them it's an obvious misdirection, and they are turning on him.
Novavax: It’s the vaccine that scares antivaxxers, not moth DNA or any ingredient in any vaccine
The Novavax COVID-19 vaccine was recently granted emergency use approval by the FDA. Company executives and some public health officials have expressed hope that this recombinant protein-based vaccine will be more palatable to the vaccine-hesitant than existing vaccines using new (and therefore scarier) mRNA and adenovirus platforms. The reaction to the use of moth cells to produce the Novavax vaccine shows that...
Scientific review articles as antivaccine disinformation
Antivaxxers have always written dubious scientific review articles to try to make their wild speculations about vaccine science seem credible. Usually such articles wind up in bottom-feeding journals. Unfortunately a recent pseudo-review article was published by an Elsevier journal, making it seem more credible when it isn't.
Can mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines cause prion disease or Alzheimer’s?
Antivax immunologist J. Bart Classen published a paper claiming that mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines can cause prion disease leading to neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's dementia. What are prions, and can these vaccines cause prion disease? (Spoiler alert: The answer to the second question is almost certainly no. It's speculation based on highly implausible biology.)
Quoth RFK Jr.: Vaccines and glyphosate are responsible for the obesity epidemic!
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. published an article claiming that vaccines and glyphosate are responsible for the obesity epidemic. Too bad he cited the work of two longtime antivaccine cranks to support his bogus claim. He's really scraping the bottom of the barrel.
The strange saga of Peter Gøtzsche and Physicians for Informed Consent
Recently, it was noted that Peter Gøtzsche, formerly of Cochrane Nordic, was featured on the speaker list for an antivaccine quackfest organized by the antivaccine group Physicians for Informed Consent, along with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Toni Bark, and Marry Holland. Two days later, he announced that he would not be speaking there. So what happened? And what is Physicians for Informed...
Prove the scientific consensus and win a prize: A time-dishonored PR ploy used by cranks, quacks, and pseudoscientists (Robert F. Kennedy Jr. edition)
Last week, antivaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. teamed up with Robert De Niro to issue a challenge to provide one scientific study that proves thimerosal in vaccines is safe, with a cash prize of $100,000. They thus joined a long line of antivaxers, creationists, and climate science denialists offering money to "prove" the scientific consensus. Science doesn't work that way.
False balance about Stanislaw Burzynski and his disproven cancer therapy, courtesy of STAT News
One common theme that has been revisited time and time again on this blog since its very founding is the problem of how science and medicine are reported. For example, back when I first started blogging, years before I joined Science-Based Medicine in 2008, one thing that used to drive me absolutely nuts was the tendency of the press to include in...