I try not to let my blog get too focussed on any one topic, but the point of this blog is to engage the public and the media and so at times a hot topic requires increased attention. When the creationists are campaigning to impose their ideology on science education, for example, they will garner my blogging attention.

Perhaps one of the hottest media science topics today is the swine flu/H1N1 pandemic and upcoming vaccine, and the anti-vaccine movement in general. This is a perfect storm of quackery, sensationalism, misinformation, and public concern.

One aspect of the anti-vaccine movement is that those who are proponents for an unscientific medical modality are keen to criticize science-based medicine because they are their competitors (ideological and/or financial). The same is true generally of pseudoscience – in order to promote your pseudoscientific claims you have to simultaneously attack the real scientists who are likely to point out that your claims are bunk.

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