Kristine
Posts: 3061
Joined: Sep. 2006
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I think this article sums up the anti-vax phenomenon quite well.
| Quote | | Healthy skepticism and thoughtful critique of science have turned into paranoia and an adherence to pseudoscience which looks like science, sounds authoritative, and tends to quack (as in quackery). In the meantime, the hypothesis that vaccines (like the MMR) or something in vaccines (such as mercury) are a causative factor autism has lodged itself deeply in the public’s consciousness, and the carefully reasoned protests of scientists about vaccines saving lives and the threats to herd immunity have so far fallen on some very deaf ears. |
This struck me:
| Quote | What’s the purpose ultimately of tracking down a conspiracy about autism and vaccines? The more reports of “evidence” “confirming” the autism-vaccine hypothesis that I read, the less these seem to be about autism. Tracking down the truth about an alleged conspiracy involving the government, vaccines and autism has become an end itself and somehow I don’t think this is in the best interest of preparing education, supports, and services for autistic children growing up to be autistic adults. The recent subpoenas of blogger Kathleen Seidel, who has carefully documented vaccine injury litagation, and Dr. Maria McCormick, who has spoken publicly and straightforwardly about there being no link between vaccines and autism, are examples of this (potentially fruitless) tendency towards conspirational thinking in proponents of a vaccine-autism link. (The subpoena against Seidel was recently quashed; a concise analysis is offered by Ars Technica.)
Conspiracy theories and controversy—especially a medical controversy involving children— attract attention, and all the more when wrapped in scholarly references and scientific-looking theories. Who doesn’t want to be proven smarter than the scientists, especially those who work for the government? |
Indeed, who doesn't? I run into this kind of stuff with friends - people really into yoga, [liberal] homeschoolers ("The capital campaign for the downtown Mpls library sucked away $$ from the branch libraries" even though that would be illegal), soy-enthusiasts ("Women who eat soy don't go through menopause"), etc. Hell, I got slapped at my blog for suggesting a diet including raw milk - turns out that it's still really a bad idea. (So I retracted that statement.)
She also quotes Daniel Engbar, whose The Paranoid Style in American Science, which I also posted in the Expelled thread, analyzes the theme running through both the MMR controversy and the claims of the movie Expelled.
| Quote | The proponents of intelligent design are far from the only critics of mainstream science whose skepticism has taken on the trappings of conspiracy theory. In a 2005 article for Salon and Rolling Stone, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. reported on a top-secret meeting in rural Georgia where high-level government officials and pharmaceutical executives worked to cover up the link between children's vaccines and autism. (No such link has been found.) The public utilities are still accused, as they have been for more than 50 years, of conspiring against America's youth by fluoridating the water supply. And skeptics of the obesity epidemic point out that the media collude with pharmaceutical companies to feed a booming weight-loss industry. Paranoid science reveals nonmedical conspiracies, too—impenetrable ballistics data form the basis for a theory of the assassination of JFK, and the calculations of structural engineering cast doubt on the official story of 9/11....
Like the producers of Expelled, Farber portrays mainstream, government-funded science as a repressive regime intolerant of dissent. The victimized academic in this scenario is University of California-Berkeley virologist Peter Duesberg [My favorite guy]  , who wonders why AIDS sometimes appears without any sign of HIV infection, and why no one has yet demonstrated the mechanism by which the virus kills off our immune system's helper T-cells. (He proposes instead that AIDS is a "chemical syndrome," resulting from heavy drug use; for ample evidence to the contrary, click here.)
According to Farber, this challenge to the conventional wisdom cost Duesberg his government funding, his lab facilities, and his graduate students. He was also denied pay raises, disinvited from scientific meetings, and barred from publishing in certain scientific journals. Who's behind all this? Some combination of the FDA, the NIH, the pharmaceutical companies, and even the AIDS nonprofits. In short, Duesberg ran afoul of "a global, multibillion-dollar juggernaut of diagnostics, drugs, and activist organizations."
Harper's has shown a peculiar affinity, over the years, for contrarian science: [I have indeed noticed this.] In addition to the Farber piece, the magazine has run repeated attacks on the theory of evolution from former Washington editor Tom Bethell, not to mention last month's excerpt from David Berlinski. But it's also the place where Richard Hofstadter laid out his seminal thesis on "the paranoid style in American politics"—an analysis of the conspiracy-minded, radical right that might just as well describe today's radical skeptics of science. The essay first appeared in November of 1964, the same year as the first surgeon general's report on the dangers of smoking, and not long before the tobacco companies geared up the machines of manufactured uncertainty.
The paranoid style, Hofstadter wrote, "is nothing if not scholarly in its technique." In his mainstream enemies, the conspiratorial thinker sees "a projection of the self"—he's just like them but more discerning and more rational. Indeed, for the paranoid skeptics, it's not that science is wrong but that the scientists aren't scientific enough. So, Farber complains that AIDS researchers have abandoned the most basic principles of skeptical inquiry; excepting herself and Peter Duesberg, "moral zeal rather than skepticism defines the field." Meanwhile, the doubt-mongers defer to the credentials of academic science even as they question its authority. [That's called a parody of science.] The 9/11 conspiracy theorists rally around a physics professor at a major university; when David Berlinski turns up in Expelled, attention is lavished on his Ivy League bona fides. |
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Which came first: the shimmy, or the hip?
AtBC Poet Laureate
"I happen to think that this prerequisite criterion of empirical evidence is itself not empirical." - Clive
"Damn you. This means a trip to the library. Again." -- fnxtr
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