Stuff And Nonsense

The Arrogance of Ignorance: Anti-Vaccine Website Blunders Again

jdc325 — Fri, 10 May 2013 11:27:43 +0000

Misnamed anti-vaccine website Child Health Safety posted a blog recently in which a number of surprising claims were made with great certainty. I thought these claims sounded very dubious and it turned out that they were. It’s taken me a few days to get round to posting this debunking partly because, unlike Child Health Safety, […]

The Anti-Vaccine Movement: A Terrible Track Record

jdc325 — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 19:40:49 +0000

Anti-vaccinationists have made a wide range of claims about the dangers of vaccines. In spite of the fact that they have generally had neither data nor a plausible mechanism for the claimed effect, several of their claims have been investigated by researchers. As it turns out, the anti-vaccinationists are remarkably consistent. Time and time again, […]

SIDS and Smoking: ‘Pro-Choice’ Activist Torpedoes Own Argument

jdc325 — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 21:56:50 +0000

Dave Atherton of Freedom2Choose (which claims to seek “to protect the informed choices of consenting adults on the issues of smoking”) has written a piece that touches on the issue of smoking and SIDS. I found it quite interesting. But probably not for reasons that would please the author. The article in The Commentator introduces SIDS […]

Bad Arguments: Nadine Dorries and IPSA

jdc325 — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 21:58:00 +0000

Everybody’s favourite MP, Nadine Dorries, has written an interesting new blog post on an investigation into her expenses. This is of interest for a couple of reasons. First, it enables us to play the traditional parlour game of spot the fiction. Secondly, it gives us a chance to look at how Nadine argues. A newly […]

The Independent: Flu Vaccine “Over-hyped”

jdc325 — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 22:03:50 +0000

Main news article Here, the Independent have a story about the flu vaccine being over-hyped. It seems to me that the message from scientists is that (a) the vaccine is not as effective as was thought (b) this over-estimation means there has been less focus on the development of better vaccines against influenza and (c) […]