Category: Science and Medicine

The Grand Debunk of the antivaxxer book “Turtles All the Way Down” (part 2/10)

The second installment in debunking the antivaxxer book "Turtles All the Way Down": Chapter 2, supposedly concerned with “The Science of Adverse Events”.

/ July 16, 2023

Praise for Dr. Monica Gandhi

Ideally, leaders of American medicine would have had the courage to correct misinformation spread by their fellow doctors. At a bare minimum, they didn't have to lavish praise on a doctor who repeatedly polluted our COVID landscape with obvious misinformation and falsely pacified people the worst was over, when in fact the worst was yet to come.

/ July 14, 2023

The Grand Debunk of the antivaxxer book “Turtles All the Way Down” (part 1/10)

This book — written by "Anonymous", edited by Children's Health Defense lawyer Mary Holland and Children's Health Defense Publisher Liaison and Thinking Moms’ Revolution co-founder Zoey O’Toole, and published by "The Turtles Team" — purports to use only mainstream references to prove its points. But the book employs all the standard tropes in a master class of science denial and antivax tactics...

/ July 13, 2023
Neko Health whole body scans

The return of marketing hype for “whole body scans”…now with AI!

Two decades ago, I cut my skeptical teeth countering advertising for whole body scans by companies making extravagant promises for their products. This particular medical fad faded for a while, but now it's back with a vengeance...with AI! Looking at these products, what I see is basically the quackery that is functional medicine on steroids and powered by AI.

/ July 10, 2023

Delabeling Penicillin Allergies: A Public Service Announcement from Science-Based Medicine

Is your child allergic to penicillin? Are you sure about that? Penicillin allergy is much less common than widely believed and there is a big push to delabel pediatric and adult patients who actually can tolerate these antibiotics.

/ July 7, 2023

When Doctors Have Different Standards of Evidence for the Virus and the Vaccine

817,000 Americans had already died of COVID by December 23, 2021, and 244,000 more would die the next year. Millions more survived, but were injured. These numbers could have been lower if doctors had not become defense attorneys for SARS‑CoV‑2 and prosecutors against the vaccine, and instead applied similar standards of evidence to both.

/ July 4, 2023

Anti-Vaccine Doctors: “Kids Don’t Need the Vaccine Because They Are Less Likely to Acquire SARS-CoV-2 and Because Most Already Had COVID-19”

Those of us who thought about vaccines before the pandemic know perfectly well that anti-vaxxers start with their conclusions and work backwards to retrofit the "evidence." Doctors who do the same shouldn't be regarded any differently.

/ June 30, 2023

Steve Kirsch and Brandolini’s law

The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it.

/ June 24, 2023

Science-Based Satire: Could Spontaneous Human Combustion Become a Chronic, Treatable Disease? Maybe. Yeah, I think so.

Do humans spontaneously burst into flames? Can these mysterious cases be predicted and kept at bay by homeopathic remedies? No. They don't and they can't. I made it all up. Is it just me, or is getting really hot in here.

/ June 23, 2023

Can Kinesiology Tape Increase Oxygen Delivery and Improve Sports Performance?

USA Track & Field is endorsing a kinesiology tape that is claimed to improve cell oxygenation.

/ June 22, 2023