Promoting Science and Critical Thinking
Rather a lot of beliefs do not lean on evidence, but instead are castles of confidence that are built upon something distinctly different. I’m not specifically talking about religion, so what am I getting at? OK, let’s work a few examples. Myth: Vaccines cause Autism I need not go into the history here, except to perhaps point … Read more
Living a rather isolated lifestyle from the rest of us are the Amish community. They are a religious group generally located in Pennsylvania as a result of an 18th century migration, and numbers at roughly 220,000 individuals. Natural News (yes “that” Natural News) has been using them to assert a claim in the context of the observation that … Read more
So once again the topic of vaccines and autism pops up and the media is running with it because somebody famous has said something utterly daft. To be fair, media outlets do often balance things, for example the UKs Telegraph has the story and does underline that his claim is not factual. Let’s cut to the actual text within … Read more
Too my complete astonishment the claim still persists and so when challenged up pops stuff like this … why have autism rates gone up several orders of magnitude over the past fifteen – twenty years and why is autism virtually unheard of in the Amish community as the Amish don’t vaccinate? It is the anecdotal … Read more
Stephanie Messenger, an anti-vaccine advocate who truly believes that giving your kids Measles is the best approach, published a book on Amazon entitled “Melanie’s Marvelous Measles”. In this she advances the following absurd idea … Melanie’s Marvelous Measles was written to educate children on the benefits of having measles and how you can heal from … Read more
Michael Hiltzik, the prize winning journalist and columnist, has a fabulous article in the LA Times entitled … “The toll of the anti-vaccination movement, in one devastating graphic“, you should check it out. He starts off with … Aaron Carroll today offers a graphic depiction of the toll of the anti-vaccination movement. (H/t: Kevin Drum.) It comes from a Council … Read more