Mark Geier
oracknows | May 19, 2015Once again, the yearly autism quackfest known as Autism One is fast approaching. In fact, it will begin in Chicago tomorrow: five days of "autism biomed" quackery and antivaccine pseudoscience. Ever since the Great Schism in the autism antivaccine quackery community, which severed Generation Rescue from Autism One and ended Jenny McCarthy's run of being the keynote speaker every year, it just hasn't been the same. Well, not quite. It turns out that a lot of the speakers are still the same, Generation Rescue or not, Jenny McCarthy or not. Just take a look at the speaker list, and you'll see a…
oracknows | October 5, 2014
These things always seem to happen on Friday. Well, not really. It’s probably just confirmation bias, but it seems that a lot of things I’d like to blog about happen on a Friday. That leaves me the choice of either breaking my unofficial rule not to blog on the weekend or waiting until Monday, when the news tidbit might not be quite so...timely anymore. This time around, I decided to wait because, well, we’re getting into grant season again, and I could use the time to work on grants.
It is, however, good news. Very good news indeed. Remember Brian Hooker’s absolutely incompetent “…
oracknows | October 26, 2013The other day, I wrote about how the George Washington University School of Public Health screwed up big time (there's really no other way to put it that doesn't involve liberal use of the f-bomb) by allowing vaccine-autism quack Mark Geier to assist a graduate student in epidemiology (who shall not be named, even though I know who it is—and whose naming will result in comments being deleted or edited) in the final thesis project for an MPH in epidemiology. I based my blog post on other posts by Autism News Beat and Reuben at The Poxes Blog.
The reason I was so outraged and dismayed is…
oracknows | October 24, 2013NOTE: There is a followup to this post here.
Last night, I had a function related to my department to attend, which means that I didn't get home until after 9 PM. However, two blog posts have come to my attention that demand a response from me because they involve an old "friend" of the blog. This "friend" is someone whose scientific and medical misadventures over the last eight years since I became aware of him are legion. This is someone whose "biomedical" treatments for autism were based on an unshakeable belief that mercury in thimerosal, the preservative that was used in many childhood…
oracknows | November 19, 2012As I looked over the ol' blog last night, I was shocked to realize that I haven't blogged about the antivaccine movement and its offenses against science in nearly three weeks. That's right! The last time I did a vaccine post was when I examined a particularly egregiously bad paper from a couple of scientists who have drunk deeply of the antivaccine Kool Aid and as a result are trying to blame the HPV vaccine Gardasil for the death of an 18-year-old woman in Australia and a 14-year-old girl in Quebec. It's amazing but true. Rarely do I go that long without antivaccine pseudoscience attracting…
oracknows | June 12, 2012If there's one thing shared in common among nearly all advocates of pseudoscience, it is the belief that they know The Truth. More importantly, they know The Truth, and The Powers That Be don't want you to know The Truth and will do almost anything to makes sure that The Truth stays secret. Think about it. This sort of thinking is common, be it among advocates of alternative medicine, cold fusion advocates, HIV/AIDS denialists, 9/11 "Truthers," birthers, creationists, moon hoax believers, or Holocaust deniers. For instance, Mike Adams and Joe Mercola will tell you that the government in the…
oracknows | February 16, 2010Remember Mark and David Geier?
I wouldn't be surprised if regular readers may have forgotten about this father-son tag team of anti-vaccine lunacy and autism woo. After all, I haven't written about them since journalist Trine Tsouderos did her expose of their "Lupron protocol" for the Chicago Tribune nine months ago. Long time readers, however, will remember the Geiers. They were one of the very first autism-related topics I wrote about after joining ScienceBlogs four years ago, when I wrote about them in a little ditty I called Why not just castrate them? The reason that I gave my post the…