Pseudoskeptics aren’t “antivax” or “Just Asking Questions”, they’re only sowing doubt (based exclusively on antivax propaganda) and perpetuating disinformation. The difference is clear!
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You know, I just realized he said
Since I’m not skeptical about vaccines and don’t claim to be, I guess I can use it all I like. Yay!
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Besides,“skeptic” is something you apply to your own life and decisions, it’s a filter for what knowledge is useful and what is not useful. The “skeptic community” leads to right-wing MRA creeps like Dawkins and Hitchens in its own cargo cult.
Word choice (avoiding pejoratives) is not more important than having facts on our side, so all this tut-tutting is pretty irrelevant when their basic premises for feeling “skeptical about vaccines” are science-free and expose a base misunderstanding of the vaccine “injury” database.
But expecting them to understand the difference is pretty silly for any Antivaxxer/Vaccine truther, whatever they call themselves these days.
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It’s a “crude smear” to post a video where Senoff says she rejects the idea of all vaccines? (not a biologist BTW, and having an undergrad degree from 1968 doesn’t count). Mind you, that’s not a sting video or a trick question, that’s her answering a direct question from a fawning antivaxxer interviewer.
As far as safety, people including children have fatal reactions to all sorts of OTC products such as cough medicine or raspberries.
Is this a new tactic you guys are using? Because just last week I made a comment in another forum and immediately an antivaxxer popped up oozing unctuous goo. Again, it seems incredibly suspicious when people immediately pop up using the same tactics. Maybe you should accuse someone else of being a shill.
Sadly that elaborately pseudo-friendly (not so much in this case), pseudo-polite, pseudo-aggrieved behavior would strike most people as utterly sincere.
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What this “Plum” account doesn’t realize is that the “vaccine injury database” and insurance fund isn’t concerned with the injury being caused by vaccines, just occurring vaguely around the same time as the vaccine’s administration.
Thus they consider anything that happens to a child at the time of vaccination to be caused by the vaccination.
Pseudoskeptics at their finest. Never ever sincere, never ever willing to upgrade their knowledgebase in the face of facts. Just an inflated sense of self.
Remember when Bachmann said that someone told her the HPV vaccine gave their daughter autism? The year my daughter got the three doses of HPV vaccine, she got her first straight-A report card. Using the “persons opposed to vaccinations” logic, this was therefore caused by the vaccine. I would like for someone to please evaluate my claims of side effects.
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Not to single out any specific political cause, but we always gloss over the fact that some people are friendly, polite, and capable of generating an endless stream of pedantic BS but that such a person often has pronounced anti-social (sociopathic) traits. If you want to see this in a skeptic, you can easily find this personality type in people who are skeptical about the Holocaust. Drill down two mouse clicks from any skeptic web site into the conspiracy theory septic tank, and you will find the excruciatingly polite Holocaust deniers. It was about six months ago that I zeroed in on one right here, and I’ve done that elsewhere. Look for the politely pedantic skeptic, and you might be shocked at all the types of denial they espouse.
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[quote=“Mausium, post:65, topic:66516”]
Pseudoskeptics at their finest. Never ever sincere, never ever willing to upgrade their knowledgebase in the face of facts. [/quote]So true, I don’t think Greenpeace has updated their anti-GMO material in nearly 30 years.
[quote=“Mausium, post:65, topic:66516”]Just an inflated sense of self.
[/quote]There are several types of narcissism at work, but generally speaking, if you can destroy something then you are automatically smarter than the person that made it. Or something.
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Best of all, if you can “destroy” someone’s understanding of hard science through calling everyone else meanies and falling back on both complete ignorance and some sort of beatific politeness as an example of your position’s superiority.
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I really enjoyed this book, which is mainly about “moral masochism.” It describes people that grasp at victimhood to prove their moral superiority, while believing they have omnipotent insight and intelligence. Naturally, this is all a smokescreen for intense characterological aggression.
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Vaccines are actually TERRIBLE business. Pharma makes their real money selling super-expensive cures to keep old sick people alive because they’re willing to spend anything to be not dead. People don’t spend much on preventative measures, and vaccines in particular take lots of resources to develop, then aside from a few standard vaccinations, they generally only sell well when there’s a panic of some sort, so you’re investing a ton of money hoping there’s an outbreak that you can cure, and otherwise you wasted $millions, which is why they don’t bother to productize vaccines fairly often. The main reason there are vaccines is that the government insists on a few standard vaccinations for the public health, so they can count on those sales. It turns out that if you leave public health up to individuals and pharma, they screw it up badly, which is why the PUBLIC has to drive public health.
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Looks really worthwhile…and really expensive!
@plum, I saw you throw that bait out there and the waters churned. Giving people enough rope is always an interesting experiment.
Doing “experiments” on other people rather than attempting to engage in actual conversation is always an interesting way to be an asshole.
I don’t know if I count jumping into a conversation to pretend that the people in it said that vaccines were 100% safe, only to get all “why I never!” when other people read implications into your own words counts as an experiment anyway. I think it’s just self-important nonsense from a smartest-person-in-the-room.
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Ah, antivaxxers/truthers, always vigilant against the sane and well-adjusted.
I suppose you are right, as usual. Unfortunately it’s not really possible to engage in an actual conversation on that subject here.
If you promote skepticism towards the po-mouthed claims to sanctity of ultra-wealthy pharma corporations who have the legal right (bought and paid for) to hide their budgets from scrutiny, you’re an anti-vaxxer and an enemy of the hive. Never mind if you actually support vaccination.
If you advocate GMO labeling in the interests of science, you’re anti-GMO and an enemy of the hive. Never mind if you actually support GMO research and development.
If you object to people ranting and screeching at you, or you ask for a dispassionate review of fact, you are “making the tone argument”. Dissenters are not permitted to make emotional arguments, but they are also not allowed to object to the emotional outbursts of their opposition.
Logic does not determine the membership of the tribe, and the tribe always requires sacrificial victims. If none present themselves, someone will be selected.
Looks old. An old book anthologizing older papers.
Oooh. In mental health, age is the opposite of wisdom! The knowledge of 50 or 100 years ago is often so outdated as to be point-blank wrong.
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But I criticized big pharma’s profit motive in this thread and no one jumped on me, I got a Nice Post badge for it. I bet if we put up a poll we’d get 50% at least saying that profit motive in the pharmaceutical industry was endangering our health. It’s very hard for me to see how vaccines would be part of this scheme because they’d be making a lot more money selling drugs to treat these illnesses once people got them. Worrying about political corruption that drives up drug prices has nothing to do with being against vaccines.
@thaumatechnicia questioned the anti-GMO/anti-vaccine link by pointing out that lots of people are reasonably concerned about the effects of genetically modified crops. You can read my and @PrestonSturges’ replies, which I don’t think are remotely angry or witch-hunty. On one hand, there really is a lot to be concerned about in the industry surround GMO crops - if I were to avoid them it would be more likely because I was boycotting certain companies than because I was worried about their health effect. On the other hand, it’s pretty easy to find a lot of explicitly anti-GMO groups that are tied to anti-vaccine movements.
I really just don’t see this tribalism happening here, or if it is, I don’t see it happening on the lines you are suggesting. I’m not sure what you think needs to be said that you don’t think can be said here.
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Not to get too off track… But regarding GMO cropsthe biggest danger is horizontal Gene transfer of bT and roundup ready genes–which will hasten environmental immunity to those useful tools. If we aren’t careful we will be back to picking larvae off produce by hand and deploying an army of these guys into the field.
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