Fatherhood, Skeptically

The anti vaccine movement has gained a fair amount of attention early this year. The World Health Organization  (WHO) has labeled vaccine hesitancy one of it's top ten threats to global health. Measles is making a comeback in the United States. Particularly near Portland, OR  where a large outbreak has risen to 50 cases as of 4 Feb. The anti-vaccine movement is nothing new; there have been anti-vaxxers probably as long as there have been vaccines. There's even a popular depression era cartoon making fun of them: The specific claims about vaccines have been debunked time and time again. As such I will not present here an exhaustive list of them, as this topic will no doubt come up again, but instead discuss the ones that come up most when I talk to other parents. Before I get into the weeds here, I'd like to say that it is 100% okay to be concerned about what is going on with your child's medical care. Illness is frightening for us parents and painful for child...

This first post I wanted to be an extension of the blog description in the header. Specifically, I want to expand on the things that led to my conclusion that there was a niche in skepticism, parenting, that needed filling. I like to consider myself fairly active in the skeptical community. I am, at the time of this writing, a graduate student studying chemistry, I am an administrator of a local skeptical community's Facebook page where I am partly responsible for setting up meetings, demonstrations, etc. Finally, I work tirelessly to apply skepticism to my everyday life. So why parenting; why not a broader topic; why not focus on academia? There are a couple reasons. First, I have noticed that a fair amount of the fear and uncertainty that leads people into pseudoscience comes form wanting to do right by our children; do give them their best possible start in life. The sad irony is that many delve into pseudoscience and end up putting their children in unnecessary danger...