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Showing posts from February, 2018

Disconnect from Reality

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There's something I can't get my head around. I'm sure most science communicators are already aware of this, but I'll write this anyway. This is for the antivaxers. The anti-vaccine crowd rail against the pharmaceutical companies and claim things like these charming Guy-Fawkes-mask-wearing-woke individuals pictured here. The bullshit claim that Big Pharma doesn't care about us, they just want to make money. The same could be said about most companies really. All companies want to make money. But, these pharmaceutical companies market and distribute effective cures and preventive measures against so many things. From vaccines to antidepressants to statins, we have such an impressive range of medications that it's hard to believe that you, the anti-vaccine crowd, can really feel this way. This shows such a disconnect from reality, it's shocking and sad. Even stranger still, you claim that vaccines are not tested enough. This is an outright lie.

David 'Avocado' Wolfe and the Reviews

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An early Skeptical Kiwi meme Yesterday morning, while browsing through Facebook, after reading another articulate article from Anna Zakrisson, Doctor Anna's Imaginarium, I discovered something. I discovered that you can review one of the vilest, most influential, woo-peddling, pseudoscience-pushing, snake-oil-selling charlatans on Facebook, David 'Avocado' Wolfe. The muppet most people will know as the man who used to endorse and own stocks in the Nutribullet and the reality TV show "Mad Mad House" as a nudist. A greasy, naked, nutter. This man has some outrageous claims. Some outright dangerous, such as vaccines are bad, to the downright hilarious, like mushrooms are from space and salt stops water from floating into space. He's also a flat-earther. The article mentioned earlier was Doctor Anna's writings on SciComm ( here ) and the ugly realisation when joining Facebook that pseudoscience is rife. Not only is it horribly common, but people will

Reason for Reason

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"Ours are not beliefs. Ours are studies, facts, and science. Antivaxers have belief, just as delusional religious fanatics do because facts and reason are not on your side. All you have are delusions and misinformation." - Skeptical Kiwi. Why do I do this? My partner asked me this question the other day. Why do I find so much pleasure in "trolling" idiots on the internet? Well, the short answer is, I enjoy it and think it's necessary. The long answer, well, let's talk about that. I am a layman. I'm currently studying for a Bachelor of Science and hope to do more after that too. I currently enjoy all science really. I enjoy watching and reading about astrophysics and love Neil De Grasse Tyson and Brian Cox. I think though that learning Calculus and getting fully into physics is beyond me. I'll enjoy physics from a lay perspective I think. I thoroughly enjoy Biology and I'm good at it. My passion is vaccination. From the moment I found o