Skeptophilia

In Dorothy Sayers' novel Gaudy Night , set (and written) in 1930s England, a group of Oxford University dons are the targets of an incre...

The controversy and misinformation surrounding the COVID-19 vaccines have brought the anti-vaxx movement back into the spotlight, and once a...

Yesterday morning when I was reading the news, I saw a story that induced me to use say some very bad words, that for the benefit of my more...

Let's get something straight from the outset. Vaccines don't cause autism.  They never have.  The "research" of Andrew W...

A friend and loyal reader of Skeptophilia , who also happens to be a veterinarian, sent me a message saying, "They're coming for m...

One rather frustrating tendency, amongst those of us who have a skeptical bent, is that people tend to believe anything they read if it begi...

It is a general rule of human behavior that it is way easier to make people afraid of something than it is to convince them that what they f...

A lot of you might have heard about the newest character on Sesame Street  -- a little girl named Julia who is autistic. It's a gut...

For people with an axe to grind, there's a problem with the scientific method; it can't be swayed by bribes or specious arguments.  ...

What do you know about diphtheria? If you're like most of us, you probably know it's one of those bad childhood diseases pretty mu...

Two news stories I came across this weekend are mostly interesting in juxtaposition. First, a  paper in the Journal of Advertising ,  by I...

For the latest reason that you should avoid being vaccinated, as long as you have zero understanding of science, we have: The medical esta...

At what point do homeopaths and other purveyors of woo non-medicine cross the line into committing a prosecutable act of medical fraud? I ...

There's harmless woo-woo, and then there's woo-woo where people die. It's all too easy to write off a lot of weird, counterfac...