Conspiracy theories

The Craig Egan/Tenpenny Saga. Part 3: Tenpenny Returns

Jan 9, 2017 | Alt-med, Conspiracy theories, Skepticism, Vaccination | 0 Comments

Dr. Tenpenny on Vaccines is back on Facebook. If you don't partake in Facebook I suppose you won't be able to see what she's up to, but she has websites as well. Feel free to look her up on the innerwebs. Tenpenny Integrated Medical Centers, the page for her business where she offers up all manner of unscientific therapies, has also returned. They are both up and running, though feeling just a bit more sedate than usual. At the same time...

The Craig Egan/Tenpenny Mystery. The Saga Continues.

Jan 8, 2017 | Conspiracy theories, Health, Vaccination | 3 Comments

I just saw the following in a Facebook post. I just got a call at work from the FBI. The agent asked me if I knew who Dr Tenpenny was and if I was "trolling" her page. I explained the best I could and offered full cooperation. If that was me I would be describing a moment of shitting myself. The FBI. Is calling me. Why is the FBI calling me? Shit. But it turns out that writer went by the name of Craig Egan. Yesterday I suggested...

The tale of Craig Egan, the mythological scourge of the anti-vaccine crowd.

Jan 7, 2017 | Alt-med, Conspiracy theories, Health, Skepticism, Vaccination | 6 Comments

Image from http://www.cover4face.com/ Not long ago, say about 6 weeks, there was a Facebook page called Proud Parents of Unvaccinated Children (PPUC). Its purpose was to celebrate having children who were unvaccinated so as to trade suggestions and advice about how to keep kids unvaccinated. That advice ranged from merely misinformed to utterly bizarre. It was a hotbed of conspiracy theory, new age, libertarian, pseudo-science, outright lies...

Natural News is despicable

Jul 23, 2012 | Conspiracy theories | 11 Comments

Natural News is a website put together by someone by the name of Mike Adams who calls himself the Health Ranger. It is very popular. I see references to Natural News stories, usually implausible and often ridiculous, on Facebook on a regular basis. It is often used by anti-vaccine crazies to back up their claims. According to rationalwiki.org "Adams is a flat-out opponent of modern medicine and opposes any medication or doctor visits. Adams...

Who says? And how do they know?

May 28, 2012 | Conspiracy theories, Health, Logical fallacies | 4 Comments

I'm a skeptic. While it's popular to pigeonhole skeptics as cynics who don't believe anything and will criticise everything, it's really not like that. It's really a question of not blindly accepting things as true. It's about testing ideas for plausibility and evidence. It's something that grows out of a reaction to what this skeptic perceives as the willingness of so many to believe so many silly things. While it's tempting as a skeptic...

Confirmation Bias

May 25, 2012 | Conspiracy theories, Logical fallacies | 1 Comment

Confirmation bias, according to Wikipedia is a tendency of people to favor information that confirms their beliefs or hypotheses. People display this bias when they gather or remember information selectively, or when they interpret it in a biased way. The effect is stronger for emotionally charged issues and for deeply entrenched beliefs. It's just one kind of bias. If you look of types of bias on the inner webs you'll find lots of them....

May 20, 2012 | Conspiracy theories | 1 Comment

I've been struggling to write a post about the Big Pharma Conspiracy. I've been finding it very hard to write and I think the reason is on displaying this comic. (By the way, if you don't know XKCD, have a look. Sometimes obscure but usually insightful and funny.) A conspiracy theorist isn't merely approaching an idea with flawed logic, though their logic is often horribly flawed, but they seem to have a mode of thinking that leads them to...

Having an open mind.

May 7, 2012 | Conspiracy theories, Vaccination | 5 Comments

Source: thehealthyhomeeconomist.com via Simone on Pinterest I was having a discussion with someone on Facebook today about vaccination. He kept making claims, and I kept asking for links or evidence or anything I could actually discuss. None were forthcoming. He talked about experts that "report serious concerns with the vaccination regime". He didn't name any experts. He didn't...