About a “grossly misinformed actress” and a certain doctor
David Kirby’s latest Huffington Post post is entitled Amanda Peet vs. the Medical Establishment. Towards the end, he writes:
I am not a parent, and I am not anti-vaccine. But if I were going to listen to experts on this subject, I would be more likely to consult some of these people, rather than a well-meaning but grossly misinformed actress who is guided by a doctor who will likely make money from his own work helping to develop a childhood vaccine.
In his post, Kirby names Amanda Peet as the “well-meaning but grossly misinformed actress” and Paul Offit, M.D. as the misinformation-spreading doctor.
It seems he has the names wrong—-didn’t he mean this actress and this doctor (the author of the preface to said actress’ book)?
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20 opinions for About a “grossly misinformed actress” and a certain doctor
Cliff
Jul 19, 2008 at 7:22 pm
Yeah, as I mentioned when Regan brought up the article, I laughed when I read the article, in just the sheer attempts to make a case, and even then it’s an argument by normative pressures (”they believe that the link exists as I state it, so you should too”).
Cliff
Kristina Chew, PhD
Jul 19, 2008 at 7:28 pm
It read more than a bit of rhetorical huff and, yes, “intellectually null.
Angela
Jul 19, 2008 at 7:31 pm
Hehe! Those were my thoughts exactly!
Dedj
Jul 19, 2008 at 8:06 pm
Wow. I always knew there was a truck load of misinformation going around about vaccines, but visiting that HuffPo has actually scared me.
I’m not joking, the realisation that we’re up against people who put the medical opinion of a senator above and beyond the opinion of possibly THE most experienced, informed, credentialed and (importantly) successful vaccine researchers alive just absolute fucking scares me.
Janice
Jul 19, 2008 at 8:48 pm
What a tool! How maddening. I’m tired of people telling me that my daughter’s autism was caused by vaccines when we could see signs from very early on in her development that she wasn’t NT.
Dawn
Jul 19, 2008 at 10:38 pm
When I took my son to great doctor in San Francisco, I asked her what she thought of Jenny McCarthy. She told me, “Playboy bunnies should not be pretending to cure autism. They should stick with what they know.” She also mentioned that her son may have been mis diagnosed and does not have autism at all. I feel like she has given parents such false hope that if they do what she did, theri children will be magically cured. There is none. Each and every parent need to find what works for their child. There is no one size fits all.
Cliff
Jul 20, 2008 at 12:11 am
“Wow. I always knew there was a truck load of misinformation going around about vaccines, but visiting that HuffPo has actually scared me.
I’m not joking, the realisation that we’re up against people who put the medical opinion of a senator above and beyond the opinion of possibly THE most experienced, informed, credentialed and (importantly) successful vaccine researchers alive just absolute fucking scares me.”
Oh, welcome to the world of autism misinformation. Enjoy your stay, and try and keep your brain entirely inside your head. It tends to try and fall out while your in this wonderful place.
Cliff
Cliff
Jul 20, 2008 at 12:12 am
“Wow. I always knew there was a truck load of misinformation going around about vaccines, but visiting that HuffPo has actually scared me.
I’m not joking, the realisation that we’re up against people who put the medical opinion of a senator above and beyond the opinion of possibly THE most experienced, informed, credentialed and (importantly) successful vaccine researchers alive just absolute fucking scares me.”
Oh, welcome to the world of autism misinformation. Enjoy your stay, and try and keep your brain entirely inside your head. It tends to try and fall out while you’re in this wonderful place.
Cliff
Cliff
Jul 20, 2008 at 12:13 am
Bah, it double posted! Sorry about that.
Cliff
Kristina Chew, PhD
Jul 20, 2008 at 11:51 am
Worth reading twice——they’ll be some questions for McCarthy to answer (not that she’ll answer them) if she keeps “advocating” for “vaccine safety”; eyes will be on her son and how “autistic” he is.
C. S. Wyatt
Jul 20, 2008 at 6:26 pm
As I am teaching a science writing course this semester to exiting seniors, it would be a good practice to have them critique anything by Kirby. (This is also a good defense for my “meaningless” degree in rhetoric.)
“The public” (a term that should be “the uninformed majority” at this point) and political leaders are not experts. This is how we end up with strange jury decisions and laws that only further misinformation.
We expect science to have “CSI” simplicity, solving complex DNA issues in an hour or less, minus time for commercials.
Also, Kirby represents the same nonsense that I read from many 9/11 conspiracy proponents: if we can’t explain it easily, it has to be a conspiracy — which offers a nice, easy explanation. (I actually heard a claim all this is connected — 9/11 was a coverup of the U.S. poisoning our children. Wow.)
People look for patterns and easy rationalizations. Some great studies on human biases and inability to accept chaos have been published this year.
Kirby should read those and realize… life is sometimes just random. Even “clusters” can be random events.
Kristina Chew, PhD
Jul 20, 2008 at 6:45 pm
@CS Wyatt, do you have any citations for those studies? Am to give a lecture on Myth and Science, in the Ancient World and Today, next Monday for the summer program I am teaching in.
Once we were in NYC and, exiting the PATH train station, ran right into a 9/11 conspiracy demonstration; they chanted “we want the truth” over and over (to the extent that Charlie started to echo them).
Maybe your degree’s not so “meaningless” after all…..
Regan
Jul 20, 2008 at 6:58 pm
This seemed to be as good a point as any,
List of logical fallacies
List of cognitive biases”
When I took critical thinking way back when, there was a classmate who intentionally and perversely used knowledge of the above to persuade people using fallacy and insight into cognitive bias. Cynical…and disturbingly successful.
C. S. Wyatt
Jul 20, 2008 at 8:14 pm
The studies I mention have been covered well by the Washington Post and Scientific American MIND. The article on mistaking chaos for a pattern is in June/July MIND — which also has a great article on the rhetoric of ad hominem attacks!
Pattern recognition is part of the book, The Science of What Makes Us Unique (2008) Michael S. Gazzaniga. The book has a great discussion of how the left brain always applies a pattern or explanation to events, as evidenced by studies of “divided brain” or “split brain” patients.
The Washington Post author is Shankar Vedantam, who covers neurology and science, like Tierny does at the NYT.
Haas, de Waal, and Hauser have also written extensively on how the human brain seems to need explanations.
As for the rhetoric degree, I became interested in how people talk about science and technology. My family doesn’t understand: why not just stick to programming and neurology?
Laura
Jul 21, 2008 at 1:43 pm
For what it’s worth, in the wake of the coverage of the CDC testimony, I started my own one-person letter writing campaign to HuffPo. Not that HuffPo has the highest of high standards for journalistic excellence. But it does have a reputation.
If you’re interested, the email address is: info@huffingtonpost.com
Tara
Jul 21, 2008 at 4:49 pm
@ C.S. Wyatt,
thank you for the pointer to Gazzaniga’s book, I read some excerpts and will definitely read the rest. My husband has delusional disorder, persecutory subtype and, unfortunately, I often have the opportunity of seeing that pattern based event explanation mechanism taken to the absolute extreme. He will analyze events (some of them real, and some of them made up), agree that each one of them can have plausible and probable alternative explanation and after all that he will still apply the rule of pattern: those events all fit the pattern and pattern has much more weight than anything else, therefore the pattern wins.
Regan
Jul 23, 2008 at 12:23 pm
David Kirby clarifies the real purpose of his blog posts on Huffington and Steven Novella dissects the arguments,
Autism and Vaccines: Responding to Poling and Kirby
Steven Novella, Science-Based Medicine blog
Regan
Jul 23, 2008 at 5:41 pm
Good grief.
David Kirby now says that the whole article was tongue in cheek, like “Jonathan Swift” (he wishes).
Well, I am done with paying attention to Mr. Kirby, the only difference between him and the vacuum of the same name is that in the latter the hot air goes in.
You all have a good day.
Marita
Jul 25, 2008 at 3:36 am
I was really unhappy this afternoon to find out that my reality break light entertainment (WWE SmackDown!) has been poisoned by Jenny McCarthy and her Generation Rescue.
Hope it is okay that I included a link back to here about her confusion re her sons diagnosis.
http://leechbabe.wordpress.com/2008/07/25/sickened/
Digger
Sep 28, 2008 at 11:47 am
Is it not amazing who is putting out misinformation.
Here’s Hitlers man propaganda specialist
(Joseph Goebbels) If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time …
today we would say at least until
the new laws take affect on preemption ( If it is
FDA approved you have no recourse)
Sorry if the truth hurts, they are trying to stop all this in their words misinformation on the Net.
No !! they are trying to stop the TRUTH!!!
These people are worse than child molesters,
for they will allow a child to remain sick, heavy metal toxic with gut issues, to stop their embarrassment for poisoning a generation of children.
This was written about a mass poisoning through teething powders that until around 1950 was effecting 1 - 500 children sound familiar?? the autism numbers were 1 - 500 in 1999 those who do not learn from history are destined to repeat history.
The resistance to the evidence of mercury poisoning is typical of resistance to new
medical knowledge and declined only when the opponents and sceptics grew
old and disappeared from the scene. Meanwhile, the cause having been
identified and accepted, pink disease disappeared, but its consequences
emerged much later, in an unexpected quarter, as a cause of male
infertility.
It doe’s appear that those opponents and sceptics that grew old and disappeared from the scene are back in 2008.
Pink disease disappeared. No! not with out the help of chelation it didn’t you know! that awful dangerous voodoo that parents are doing to their children.
A little more history
This next sentence could be today’s news
But slowly the evidence was stacking up against mercury. Dimercaprol or ( today THIMEROSAL )
(British anti-Lewisite; BAL) is a chelating agent developed for military use against possible gas attacks and in the 1950s was the standard treatment for industrial mercury poisoning. Several physicians gave their pink disease
patients dimercaprol with gratifying cures.(The drug was never tested in a
proper controlled clinical trial as the disease disappeared before such a trial
you mean it worked so fast they could not even get a study togather before it had irratacated it
YEP!!!!
you mean there were not dead bodies all over the place like the CDC and the AAP and the IOM would like you to believe
Yep!!!!!!!
And our proof to that is, there is no mention of mass deaths in history just kids cured….
note the words gratifying cures sort of like the courageous parents are seeing in the removal of the mercury in their children. And the results are the children are no longer considered on the spectrum. WOW! you mean we were stupid enough to
repeat history YEP!!! through GREED and arragantsy
These Dr’s. if you can call them that are so arrogant like for example Paul Offit vaccine salesman extraordinaire, the best paid friend a pharmaceutical company could ever have…
How Paul do you sleep nights?????
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