Monthly Archives: October 2011

May 2012

• TLC's vaccine misinformation piece vanishes into the ether. Do they owe readers an explanation? (Also: Chicago Sun-Times endorsement of anti-vaccine conference remains online.)
• Major medical, science organizations prepare letter to TLC about its vaccine fear-mongering
• UPDATE: Sun-Times endorsement of autism quackfest remains online even after editor claims it was "incorrect"
• TLC disappears comments, edits its turd of an anti-vaccine piece. It still stinks.
• More media stupidity: Chicago Sun-Times runs propaganda piece for Jenny McCarthy's anti-vaccine conference
• Taking stupid to a whole new level: TLC's entry for the "Worst piece written about vaccines"
• Meandering Mississippi: An early journalism iBook is all wet
• E.O. Wilson's The Social Conquest of Earth: Sloppy, self-indulgent, & unsophisticated

April 2012

• Crap futurism, cruftiness, and walled gardens: A Download the Universe roundtable on e-reading

March 2012

• Bob Sears: Bald-faced liar, devious dissembler, or both?
• The frozen future of nonfiction: My review of David Eagleman's Why The Net Matters
• This weekend: The workings of the brain, nanotechnology, and the future of science writing

February 2012

• SciWriteLabs 7.3: Long-form narratives, crappy first drafts, and the importance of wasting time

January 2012

• Autism roundtable, part 2
• Autism roundtable, Part I: Angry parents, disability rights, and living in a neurotypical world
• Greetings from SciO12...
• "Vigilante for truth": An accurate headline...or shameless Twitter bait?
• SciWriteLabs 7.2: The New York Times's Amy Harmon on what it means to be a science writer
• SciWriteLabs 7.1: The New York Times's Amy Harmon on neurodiversity and writing about autism
• It really is bizarro day: Andrew Wakefield sues Brian Deer, BMJ
• Has the Huffington Post embraced science & closed the door on anti-vaccine quackery?
• The Thinking Person's Guide to Autism Q/A
• SciWriteLabs 7.3: Long-form narratives, crappy first drafts, and the importance of wasting time

December 2011

• Context and corrections in writing about autism and vaccines: A case study in misleading your readers
• John Elder Robison: "Why The Times remains the paper of record"
• The New York Times's incredible piece on the lives and loves of two adults with Aspergers
• LATimes on the autism "epidemic": "more a surge in diagnosis than in disease"
• Kurt Anderson is back!

November 2011

• Get your free copy of The Panic Virus (and check out the National Press Foundation's Vaccine Webinar, too!)
• Tomorrow night: Virtually Speaking Science with Tom Levenson -- Live on radio ... and Second Life
• Today's Twitter chat with "Here is a Human Being" author Misha Angrist...Storified!
• Here is a Twitter chat...with Misha Angrist
• SciWriteLabs #6: BMJ editor Fiona Godlee on the Wakefield-MMR fiasco, the problems with peer review, and research oversight boards
• SciWriteLabs #5.2: Bhattacharya returns! The MMR debacle and why peer review is no substitute for penetrative reporting
• SciWriteLabs #5.1: Nature's Ananyo Bhattacharya on "Bad Science," inverted pyramids, and information webs

October 2011

• SciWriteLabs #4, in which Alistair Dove argues that bad science inevitably gets "overwritten" by good science...and I point out on all the harm that can happen in the meantime
• SciWriteLabs #3: TWiV co-hosts on arrogance vs. accountability
• "The risk that watching ABC News will cause your head to explode can't be ruled out."
• SciWriteLabs #2: Reuters' Ivan Oransky and Wired's Adam Rogers on sources v. subjects & more on the factchecking debate
• Introducing SciWriteLabs. Today's installment: Kroll and Racaniello discuss the journalism/factchecking debate
• Guardian ends run of smart science journalism discussions with scientists' self-congratulatory essay about peer review*

September 2011

• ABC News lies to readers, pretends 2009 news story on vaccines was written last week.
• Michelle Bachmann: Public health spokeswoman, Rick Perry strategist, partisan peace-maker
• Will Bachmann's anti-vaccine pandering fall flat? The changing political landscape for proponents of pediatric and public health
• So does that mean cancer patients should be suing cows?
• Why you (hopefully) won't hear claims that the MMR vaccine protects against autism
• Happy anniversary...
• Running the numbers: US vaccination rates up ever so slightly; New Jersey way below national average

July 2011

• Illinois the latest state to launch investigation into chemically castrating autism doc
• The Kingdom and the Paywall
• Ask me anything: Reddit thread open for Mahola video interview
• What price will the black-ops bin Laden vaccination scheme exact on global health efforts?
• Today at 1pm EST: Trine Tsouderos chats with Yale's Carl Baum about kids & toxins
• The bottom line: 42,000 deaths, 20 million cases of disease, and a net savings of $83 billion
• More evidence Western vaccine paranoia is being exported to developing countries

June 2011

• Anecdotal Amish-don't-vaccinate claims disproved by fact-based study
• CDC issues official emergency health alert on measles (Plus: a success story in Ghana)
• Parents and pediatricians: Do you think a pre-natal discussion about vaccines would help assuage fears?
• Tune in to the Health Affairs briefing on Strategies for the "Decade of Vaccines"
• China Hospital CEO Magazine: "Better than the Art of War and The Analects of Confucius combined"
• AskDrSears.com to feature "updated" vaccine info "within a couple of weeks."
• It's official: Wakefield joins the ranks of Truthers, New World Order conspiracists
• After disappearing from his family's site, Sears tells Facebook fans that measles outbreaks not "much risk" for infants
• Does this mean no more "Dr. Bob" Sears photo-ops with Andrew Wakefield?
• Is "Dr. Bob" Sears moving away from his profitable anti-vaccine pandering?
• Flu shot lowers odds for preemies; study highlights dangers of confusing anecdotes with data

May 2011

• Washington State joins Maryland in suspending license of doc who chemically castrates autistic children
• Blog Around the Clock: The ScienceOnline2011 interview
• Discussion of measles outbreak today at 1:35 pm on KOMO-Seattle
• An open and vigorous discourse: Commenters welcome!
• The financial implications of the US measles outbreaks
• Speaking of chemical castration...still no word from Rolling Stone on the re-appearance of its RFK Jr. story
• Roundup and reactions to the latest charges against Mark and David Geier
• Maryland charges David Geier, son of doc accused of endangering autistic children, with practicing medicine without a license
• The stamp of a superhero and the principles of the Enlightenment
• In which my Seussian name is drafted in service of an Orwellian conspiracy
• Rolling Stone re-posts RFK Jr. story lauding chemically castrating autism researchers
• Blogcritics on The Panic Virus: Compelling, hard to put down
• And the winner is...Fox News
• The latest claims of "proof" that vaccines cause autism: Will the media take the bait?
• Evidence, herd immunity, and 'total assholes'
• Pre-mature optimism about a Huffington Post shift away from anti-vaccine rhetoric
• Lessons from the shaming of chemically castrating doc who "endangers autistic children and exploits their parents"
• A move away from anti-vaccine propaganda at the Huffington Post?

April 2011

• Heroin and ad hominem attacks
• Highlights from the NYT Magazine profile of Andrew Wakefield
• Researcher who "does not meet the standard of reliability required by case law" good enough for PBS's Newshour
• The first of many statements yoking Robert MacNeil to the vaccine-autism canard
• [Abstracts] vs. anecdotes: What we have here is a failure to communicate
• An embarrassing, reckless, and irresponsible coda to Robert MacNeil's career
• An Age of Autism editor confronts child abuse on a school bus
• Today's lesson: "Alternative" Virginia school closes after half of its students infected with pertussis. All of them were unvaccinated.

March 2011

• More embarrassing anti-vaccine reporting from CBS News's Sharyl Attkisson
• A week on the road: California & Colorado recap
• Press-clips catch-up: Neurotribes, Mom Power, and the History of Vaccines
• Chang and Eng, the Brothers Quay, and a giant human colon

February 2011

• Chill out, R2: Droids don't get diseases like whooping cough
• Dept. of corrections: The phantom $10 million measles outbreak
• "You'd expect better from a Playmate": Doonesbury issues a Jenny McCarthy smackdown
• Kids are dying -- and that's a fact, not a belief.
• The Huffington Post's 'Medical Review Board' signs off on vaccine fear-mongering
• Let me state very simply: HuffPo publishes dangerously ignorant dreck
• Causation & correlation: What declining special ed rates don't (necessarily) say about autism diagnoses
• "He should have examined the eyes of my mind"
• NYT piece on "doubting" science features graphic by controversial autism researcher

January 2011

• CBS & the flu vaccine, pt. 2: A little misinformation goes a long way
• A disappearance in a CBS News flu vaccine story...and the persistence of disinformation
• Chat/interview/podcast roundup
• Salon retracts "Deadly Immunity," RFK Jr. keep it on his site...as does Dr. Jay
• Kissing Kirshenbaum: Contest extended!
• Upcoming on 1/13: Brian Lehrer, Gawker.com, ABC Radio
• Radio/review wrap-up
• 1/11/11: The official release date is finally here
• The Boston Globe: "Anatomy of a Panic"
• "The Autism Vaccine Hoax"
• The Panic Virus on NPR's On the Media
• WSJ on The Panic Virus: "Should be required reading at every medical school in the world."
• The problems with the BMJ's Wakefield-fraud story
• Boston Phoenix: Panic Virus a must-see reading of the winter
• Newsweek excerpt/essay posted online
• Get a kiss, win a book
• Oprah smackdown: Will Jenny McCarthy's vaccine nonsense top Suzanne Somers's vagina injections?

December 2010

• Dr. Jay: Still confusing the issue. Plus: Corrections via comments
• Blog commenting, availability cascades, and the autism-vaccine debate
• Q: What do Paul Offit and infant formula have in common? A: Jay Gordon's Twitter feed
• Jenny McCarthy: An enemy of rational discussion
• Online rumors: Older vaccines still contain mercury, the Amish don't get autism
• For once, good news from the NFL about player concussions
• What are doctors' ethical obligations when providing medical care to hateful patients?
• Parents at Sasha and Malia's school warned of pertussis outbreak
• The year in reading: My noir nights
• Mitochondrial-autism study addendum...
• The Huffington Post: Featuring bad science, facile reasoning since 2005
• Chronic Lyme and the dangers of writing about medical manufactroversies
• Welcome