Skeptics PWN Anti-Vax Scumbag Wakefield at His Own Rally

**Update: Check out my follow-up post for more news, photos, and video of this event.

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Well, congratulate me folks – I’m now officially part of a squad of skeptical ninjas 🙂

Today, there was an anti-vaccination rally in Chicago, and the king of anti-vax woo & nonsense – Andrew Wakefield himself – showed up.  I suppose he decided to hang with his anti-vax homies here in the U.S. seeing as how he’s essentially lost his license to practice medicine in the United Kingdom because of his fraudulent work there.

Anyway, the new skeptical group I’m part of, the Women Thinking Free Foundation (WTFF), caught wind of this wave of woo headed our way (we’re based in Chicago) and we decided, with two days notice, to mobilize and counter protest… and we did!  I did not personally attend the counter protest, as I had to teach today, but I and many others were working behind the scenes to help organize it.

The word went out like wildfire across the Internet – via email, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and message boards – and we were able to gather a group of about 10 people there.  In addition, our WTFF ninjas were able to hand out plenty of pro-vaccine literature to passers-by who might have otherwise thought that Wakefield and his ilk weren’t batcrap crazy.  Here are some examples of our handouts we whipped up as part of WTFF’s new “Hug Me, I’m Vaccinated!” campaign…

Cell Phone & Cancer Study Follow Up

Last October I posted about a really crappy piece of “journalism” in the New York Post regarding a supposed link between cellphone use and cancer.  The punchline was that the headline-grubbing morons at the NYPost ran their story before the actual study had been published!

Well, now the actual study by the real scientists & researchers involved has been published, and – lo and behold – it paints a very different picture from the fear-mongering goobers at the NYPost.  In part, their conclusion states:

“Overall, no increase in risk of glioma or meningioma was observed with use of mobile phones.”

For reference, the entire study is available here in PDF format. Now of course I’m not surprised in the least by these results, seeing as how, based upon the laws of physics as we know them, there is no plausible mechanism by which such low-energy emissions from cellphones could cause cancer!

One would hope that various media outlets would take a lesson from this fiasco, but I suppose some people are more interested in selling paper than responsible news reporting.

Skeptical App on the iPhone/Touch 3: The Big Bang Theory Study Guide

In my never-ending quest to pass along all things skeptical, techie, and educational, I have discovered another very useful app for the iPhone or iPod-Touch.  If you are into physics & astronomy, or if you happen to ever get into conversation with people regarding cosmology, cosmic evolution, the big bang, and creationism, then this is the app for you!

It’s called The Big Bang Theory Study Guide, and it is a very well-indexed and laid out collection of facts and whatnot about the big bang cosmology.  I consider this to be the physics & astronomy version of the famous Creationist Claims Index, and it is a must have for any serious skeptic & science backer…

There’s one drawback: it’s not free – but it is cheap, at a cost of only $1.99 (well worth the cost).